Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:90311
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain ncsu.edu from 209.85.215.43 cause and error)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2016 15:25:32 -0500
Message-ID: <CADMz3wco4JNLHQV+NvnaA5npF=hTnzp0zdB3gK+oDbL6tTDuFA@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: [RFC] Class Friendship
From: mdwheele@ncsu.edu (Dustin Wheeler)

Hello everyone,

Before Winter holiday, I began a discussion on the mailing list
regarding the topic of class friendship in order to gauge interest
towards authoring and implementing an RFC for the feature. This
discussion happened at:

https://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=144954699701305&w=2

I have drafted an RFC that describes a proposal to add this feature to
the language. I feel like this draft is at a point where it is
reasonable to invite additional perspective and begin the discussion
process. While the RFC does capture advice I received in the original
discussion, it does not capture as much of the justification /
reasoning behind the feature as I felt that the RFC should present the
facts of the proposal. Because of this, I urge you to read through the
original discussion before reviewing this RFC. It is also included as
the top reference for the RFC. If we feel this information is relevant
to the RFC document itself, I would gladly amend.

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/friend-classes

I will be submitting a pull request against `master` soon so that
progress and changes to implementation may be tracked for the duration
of RFC discussion. There are a few details I need to iron out in the
implementation that surfaced as part of initial discussions.

This is my first contribution to PHP and it is more ambitious that I
am normally comfortable with when making contributions to open-source
software. That said, I fully recognize and respect the expertise of
developers on this mailing list and welcome scrutiny as far as
technical implementation. I am 100% ready and willing to accept all
feedback to improve implementation where necessary.

Finally, as mentioned in the original discussion:

When I began this work, I found that (for a beginner) the
barrier-to-entry in contributing a new feature to PHP is fairly
substantial. While there were several good references for implementing
a feature such as this, much of it was out-of-date; considering the
changes made internally for PHP 7. I would like to contribute notes I
took while working through this project that begin to detail common
differences in how someone might accomplish a feature like what's
represented by this RFC for PHP 7. This feature was unique in that it
has a fairly simple and light-weight cross-cutting implementation that
seems like a decent example for a newcomer.

Is there a good place for me to send this information for review? Is
another RFC a good medium for review or would a separate post to the
mailing list suffice?

Thanks again for your time and I look forward to upcoming discussions!

-Dustin

-- 
Dustin Wheeler | Software Developer
NC State University
m: mdwheele@ncsu.edu | w: 5-9786
"If you don't know where you're going, it's easy to iteratively not get there."