[RFC][DISCUSSION] PHP Namespace in core View as Markdown

Hi Derick,

śr., 15 kwi 2020 o 15:51 Derick Rethans derick@php.net napisał(a):

Hi internals,

I hope you're doing well.

I'd like to announce the PHP Namespace in core RFC for discussion.
The RFC is authored by me together with George Peter Banyard and it's
purpose
is nothing more like to allow the use of PHP Namespace in the core.

I think a "may" is not a clever way forwards. I think that if you want
to use the PHP namespace for engine specific things (like
Attribute/Token), then they must all use that, or none.

You mean if we want to introduce PHP namespace we should also propose
immediately to move
engine specific things (like Attribute/Token) into proposal?

If so then we should search for the rest of engine specific things which
will include then
many interfaces and classes like:

1. Traversable, Iterator, IteratorAggregate - cause these are used in
   foreach statements
2. ArrayAccess - cause this one is required to accept r/w by dimension
   (offset* - methods)
3. Serializable, __PHP_Incomplete_Class ?! - cause this is used in
   serializing/deserializing and this is bound to magic methods in classes
4. stdClass - cause this is a default class of the object which is produced
   when an array is cast to (object)
5. Closure, Generator - cause these are also tightly coupled with the engine
6. Throwable, etc. - just for consistency with the rest from
   https://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.classes.php
   and https://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.interfaces.php

Is that what you mean?

Cheers,
Michał Brzuchalski

Hi internals,

I hope you're doing well.

I'd like to announce the PHP Namespace in core RFC for discussion.
The RFC is authored by me together with George Peter Banyard and it's
purpose
is nothing more like to allow the use of PHP Namespace in the core.

I think a "may" is not a clever way forwards. I think that if you want
to use the PHP namespace for engine specific things (like
Attribute/Token), then they must all use that, or none.

cheers,
Derick

--
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--

Just to clarify is this limited to new features or should this also be
applied to current engine features?
If only the former I personally don't mind making it a requirement.

Best regards

George P. Banyard

Hi Marcio,

śr., 15 kwi 2020 o 18:39 Marcio Almada marcio.web2@gmail.com napisał(a):

Hi internals,

I hope you're doing well.

I'd like to announce the PHP Namespace in core RFC for discussion.
The RFC is authored by me together with George Peter Banyard and it's
purpose
is nothing more like to allow the use of PHP Namespace in the core.

The RFC is described at https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php-namespace-in-core

Best Regards,
Michał Brzuchalski

Hello,

Even though I'm fond to the idea of languages having the official
stdlib contained
into a single space, there seems to be no practicality on a \PHP namespace
usage
at this point IMMO.

We would be in a situation where things are either mixed in and out
the new namespace

• Should I use function PHP\{json_encode, json_decode} or was it in
  the root??? - or
  everything that already exists must first receive an alias into this
  new namespace, to allow
  consistency... but then there would probably be no plans ever to
  actually move existing stuff
  into the new prefix in the future.

You've misunderstood the idea. Standard library functions classes etc. are
not language features.
It's not a purpose of this RFC to move existing functions from the standard
library but to allow core language features
to use it. Described examples show benefit in use for symbols tightly
coupled to features PHP as a language delivers.

Most of the standard library function can be replaced by implementations in
PHP or by wrapping around a C library.
The features tightly coupled with the language is for eg. the Reflection
mechanism, PhpToken class as described.
Upcoming PhpAttributes for which proposal is a work in progress.

Those all features will not likely be moved to PECL and this RFC proposal
is to allow features like that to use PHP namespace.

Cheers,
Michał Brzuchalski

Hi internals,

I hope you're doing well.

I'd like to announce the PHP Namespace in core RFC for discussion.
The RFC is authored by me together with George Peter Banyard and it's
purpose
is nothing more like to allow the use of PHP Namespace in the core.

The RFC is described at https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php-namespace-in-core

Best Regards,
Michał Brzuchalski

Hello,

Even though I'm fond to the idea of languages having the official
stdlib contained
into a single space, there seems to be no practicality on a \PHP namespace
usage
at this point IMMO.

We would be in a situation where things are either mixed in and out
the new namespace

• Should I use function PHP\{json_encode, json_decode} or was it in
  the root??? - or
  everything that already exists must first receive an alias into this
  new namespace, to allow
  consistency... but then there would probably be no plans ever to
  actually move existing stuff
  into the new prefix in the future.

With the lack of a feasible roadmap, I'd rather vote on doing nothing for
now :/

Thanks,
Márcio

--

As mentioned by Michal, JSON is not a core engine extension, you can even
compile a version of PHP without JSON support therefore compared to the
parallel discussion this extension would not be included in the PHP
namespace.

Best regards

George P. Banyard

I have been wondering for a while why PHP does not officially recognize a \PHP namespace.

The inconsistency people have mentioned feels like a fair tradeoff for allowing new core classes to be cleanly-named and easier to understand.

And a \PHP namespace would allow RFCs to never need worry about conflicting with userland class names again.

The one thing I would ask the authors:

• Why limit it to "tightly coupled to the PHP engine?"
• Why not just say "any new core classes that are approved to use it?"

After all, sometimes a namespace is just a namespace. Seems like a winner to me.

-Mike

Hi Benjamin,

pon., 20 kwi 2020 o 14:06 Benjamin Eberlei kontakt@beberlei.de napisał(a):

Hi Michał, George,

On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 2:29 PM Michał Brzuchalski <
michal.brzuchalski@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi internals,

I hope you're doing well.

I'd like to announce the PHP Namespace in core RFC for discussion.
The RFC is authored by me together with George Peter Banyard and it's
purpose
is nothing more like to allow the use of PHP Namespace in the core.

The RFC is described at https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php-namespace-in-core

I think the php namespace for core is important to have, especially for
features that have more than a single, but multiple classes, grouping them
in a PHP internal namespace will be helpful to avoid weird prefixing.

With the Attributes RFC in mind, an earlier draft has used the namespace
PHP\Attributes that a few contributors rightly mentioned is a bad idea
without project wide standardization first.

For my taste, the RFC is great except the "A chance to clean up poor
design/naming decisions" section. It goes into politics and controversial
ideas that essentially are outside the scope of the RFC itself. So while
SPL and Reflection would benefit if we had the namespace before those APIs,
I am not sure they drive down the point of why we need this:

a.) Instead of changing SPL I believe most would pretty much agree that we
just need a complete replacement with a better API (pointing towards phpds
here might be a better example)
b.) Moving some new parts of Reflection into the namespace while keeping
others in the main namespace is extremely confusing, and we shouldn't
confuse users that way. Realistically this is an issue thats not going to
be changed.

I do like the Frame example, similar to token_get_all returning an array,
debug_backtrace could benefit from an object based representation. I would
reluctantly call it a "toy example", it is an actual example or not?

The example with the Frame is something I'm thinking about to propose and
implement.

About the changing SPL. Bear in mind that the current proposal is only
about an agreement to allow the use of PHP namespace in the core.
@Benjamin: You suggest to skip the examples and arguments regarding poor
design/naming decisions with Reflection API ?

Those examples are put in the RFC to help understand the argumentation and
the result of this RFC should be the agreement that any future RFC
proposing an introduction of the tightly coupled with the PHP engine symbol
(and to mention the ones with PhpToken and PhpAttribute and family
could be perfect candidates) should not worry for the proposal to be
rejected because of the use of PHP namespace in core symbols.

BR,
Michał Brzuchalski