[RFC] Namespaced in bundled extensions

3 years ago by tyson andre — view source

unread

Hi Nikita Popov,

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Both of the namespacing RFCs have been announced for over 3 weeks and I don't think I've
seen any new discussion since then.
Are any updates planned? When will voting on the namespacing RFC(s) start?
(I had some stdlib RFCs/RFC ideas I was postponing since February to avoid interfering with the namespacing discussion)

Thanks,
Tyson

3 years ago by Nikita Popov — view source

unread

On Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 3:04 PM tyson andre tysonandre775@hotmail.com
wrote:

Hi Nikita Popov,

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot
recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main
difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Both of the namespacing RFCs have been announced for over 3 weeks and I
don't think I've
seen any new discussion since then.
Are any updates planned? When will voting on the namespacing RFC(s) start?
(I had some stdlib RFCs/RFC ideas I was postponing since February to avoid
interfering with the namespacing discussion)

I'd love to have some more feedback on this RFC before opening voting.
There has been a lot of discussion beforehand, but only a couple responses
to this RFC...

Regards,
Nikita

3 years ago by Christoph M. Becker — view source

unread

I'd love to have some more feedback on this RFC before opening voting.
There has been a lot of discussion beforehand, but only a couple responses
to this RFC...

I very much like this pragmatic approach, which also matches most of the
already existing extensions using namespaces. Thank you!

--
Christoph M. Becker

3 years ago by tyson andre — view source

unread

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Both of the namespacing RFCs have been announced for over 3 weeks and I don't think I've
seen any new discussion since then.
Are any updates planned? When will voting on the namespacing RFC(s) start?
(I had some stdlib RFCs/RFC ideas I was postponing since February to avoid interfering with the namespacing discussion)

I'd love to have some more feedback on this RFC before opening voting. There has been a lot of discussion beforehand, but only a couple responses to this RFC...

I didn't plan to suggest changing the direction of the RFC, so I didn't have much to say.
I guess it's an improvement from a user perspective and that splitting core/PECL/composer namespacing wouldn't make much sense,
especially with the ability to polyfill most core functionality in composer packages (especially with PHP providing FFI, low level socket/stream code, etc).

For something like https://wiki.php.net/rfc/cachediterable I'd still be faced with the namespacing choice among multiple options if this passed,
but choosing names for everything is out of the scope of this RFC.

iterable\CachedIterable would be the most likely, although it's also in some ways a datastructure
For SPL, e.g. for a new Map type or existing classes such as SplObjectStorage,
there'd still be a number of different names such as DataStructure\Map or Collections\Map (DS is already used by an independent PECL)
"When adding new symbols to existing extensions, it is more important to be consistent with existing symbols than to follow the namespacing guidelines."
raises the question of whether existing iterables should be aliased to a namespace around the same time
5 years from now we may have a different group of active voters, so if this passed with low voting turnout
I'm not sure if there'd still be arguments over the choice to use/not use a namespace.

For a future iteration of https://wiki.php.net/rfc/any_all_on_iterable it'd help if there was known community consensus (i.e. the vote on namespaces in bundled extensions finished)

I didn't notice before, but I assume you'd still planned to summarize feedback so far in a discussion section before opening https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

For https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions#core_standard_spl
use Array; and use String; are currently syntax errors for the unexpected token "array".
That could be fixed in the parser by adding a special case for namespace uses,
especially now that T_NAMESPACED_NAME now allows string\contains to be used without a syntax error.

One possible concern is what would happen if PHP implemented new functionality that overlapped with a fairly well-known PECL/Composer package.
E.g. if there was already a FooDB\Client in a composer/PECL package, and an independent implementation was later added to php-src,
there'd potentially be conflicting names.
Being able to implement PHP\FooDB\Client would avoid that ambiguity

Then again, other programming languages such as Python have no issue with that, so never mind.
FooDBClient\ or Foo\ or something could probably be used.

All symbols defined in the extension should be part of the top-level namespace or a sub-namespace.

This should be clarified - do you mean the extension's top-level namespace (e.g. OpenSSL) instead of the global namespace? I assume the former.

Regards,
Tyson

3 years ago by Nikita Popov — view source

unread

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 8:05 PM tyson andre tysonandre775@hotmail.com
wrote:

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot
recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main
difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and
instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Both of the namespacing RFCs have been announced for over 3 weeks and I
don't think I've
seen any new discussion since then.
Are any updates planned? When will voting on the namespacing RFC(s)
start?
(I had some stdlib RFCs/RFC ideas I was postponing since February to
avoid interfering with the namespacing discussion)

I'd love to have some more feedback on this RFC before opening voting.
There has been a lot of discussion beforehand, but only a couple responses
to this RFC...

I didn't plan to suggest changing the direction of the RFC, so I didn't
have much to say.
I guess it's an improvement from a user perspective and that splitting
core/PECL/composer namespacing wouldn't make much sense,
especially with the ability to polyfill most core functionality in
composer packages (especially with PHP providing FFI, low level
socket/stream code, etc).

For something like https://wiki.php.net/rfc/cachediterable I'd still be
faced with the namespacing choice among multiple options if this passed,
but choosing names for everything is out of the scope of this RFC.

iterable\CachedIterable would be the most likely, although it's also
in some ways a datastructure

For SPL, e.g. for a new Map type or existing classes such as
SplObjectStorage,
there'd still be a number of different names such as DataStructure\Map
or Collections\Map (DS is already used by an independent PECL)

"When adding new symbols to existing extensions, it is more important to
be consistent with existing symbols than to follow the namespacing
guidelines."
raises the question of whether existing iterables should be aliased to a
namespace around the same time

5 years from now we may have a different group of active voters, so if
this passed with low voting turnout
I'm not sure if there'd still be arguments over the choice to use/not
use a namespace.

Right. I think the two main things this RFC establishes is that a) yes, it
is okay to use a namespace and b) that namespace should not have a PHP
prefix. That still leaves you with quite a lot of different choices, but I
think it removes the two most contentious issues from further discussion.

For a future iteration of https://wiki.php.net/rfc/any_all_on_iterable
it'd help if there was known community consensus (i.e. the vote on
namespaces in bundled extensions finished)

I didn't notice before, but I assume you'd still planned to summarize
feedback so far in a discussion section before opening
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

For
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions#core_standard_spl
use Array; and use String; are currently syntax errors for the
unexpected token "array".
That could be fixed in the parser by adding a special case for namespace
uses,
especially now that T_NAMESPACED_NAME now allows string\contains to be
used without a syntax error.

Yes, those particular examples are somewhat problematic. I believe my
original version of https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaced_names_as_token also
allowed those "use" statements, so this isn't a technical problem for a new
PHP version that decides to use them. It would be a problem for polyfills
though, which is why we'd probably want to go for some other naming here.
Say Str\contains instead of String\contains. (Worth noting that this issue
also exists with "PHP\Array" before PHP 8.0, so it's not a problem that
presence of a vendor prefix would resolve, outside specific cases.)

One possible concern is what would happen if PHP implemented new
functionality that overlapped with a fairly well-known PECL/Composer
package.
E.g. if there was already a FooDB\Client in a composer/PECL package, and
an independent implementation was later added to php-src,
there'd potentially be conflicting names.
Being able to implement PHP\FooDB\Client would avoid that ambiguity

Then again, other programming languages such as Python have no issue
with that, so never mind.
FooDBClient\ or Foo\ or something could probably be used.

Right. For an existing PECL extension it would be best to just bundle it
instead of implementing a new one (even though that seems to be in fashion
recently...) But for the more general question, we should try to be
courteous and avoid collisions with important known libraries/extensions.
There's usually enough leeway with naming. If worst comes to worst, you can
always pull a mysql + mysqli :)

All symbols defined in the extension should be part of the top-level
namespace or a sub-namespace.

This should be clarified - do you mean the extension's top-level
namespace (e.g. OpenSSL) instead of the global namespace? I assume the
former.

Indeed, that's what I meant. I've added the extra word.

Regards,
Nikita

3 years ago by Nikita Popov — view source

unread

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 8:05 PM tyson andre tysonandre775@hotmail.com
wrote:

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot
recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main
difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and
instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Both of the namespacing RFCs have been announced for over 3 weeks and I
don't think I've
seen any new discussion since then.
Are any updates planned? When will voting on the namespacing RFC(s)
start?
(I had some stdlib RFCs/RFC ideas I was postponing since February to
avoid interfering with the namespacing discussion)

I'd love to have some more feedback on this RFC before opening voting.
There has been a lot of discussion beforehand, but only a couple responses
to this RFC...

I didn't plan to suggest changing the direction of the RFC, so I didn't
have much to say.
I guess it's an improvement from a user perspective and that splitting
core/PECL/composer namespacing wouldn't make much sense,
especially with the ability to polyfill most core functionality in
composer packages (especially with PHP providing FFI, low level
socket/stream code, etc).

For something like https://wiki.php.net/rfc/cachediterable I'd still be
faced with the namespacing choice among multiple options if this passed,
but choosing names for everything is out of the scope of this RFC.

iterable\CachedIterable would be the most likely, although it's also
in some ways a datastructure

For SPL, e.g. for a new Map type or existing classes such as
SplObjectStorage,
there'd still be a number of different names such as
DataStructure\Map or Collections\Map (DS is already used by an
independent PECL)

"When adding new symbols to existing extensions, it is more important
to be consistent with existing symbols than to follow the namespacing
guidelines."
raises the question of whether existing iterables should be aliased to
a namespace around the same time

5 years from now we may have a different group of active voters, so if
this passed with low voting turnout
I'm not sure if there'd still be arguments over the choice to use/not
use a namespace.

Right. I think the two main things this RFC establishes is that a) yes, it
is okay to use a namespace and b) that namespace should not have a PHP
prefix. That still leaves you with quite a lot of different choices, but I
think it removes the two most contentious issues from further discussion.

For a future iteration of https://wiki.php.net/rfc/any_all_on_iterable
it'd help if there was known community consensus (i.e. the vote on
namespaces in bundled extensions finished)

I didn't notice before, but I assume you'd still planned to summarize
feedback so far in a discussion section before opening
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

For
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions#core_standard_spl
use Array; and use String; are currently syntax errors for the
unexpected token "array".
That could be fixed in the parser by adding a special case for namespace
uses,
especially now that T_NAMESPACED_NAME now allows string\contains to be
used without a syntax error.

Yes, those particular examples are somewhat problematic. I believe my
original version of https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaced_names_as_token
also allowed those "use" statements, so this isn't a technical problem for
a new PHP version that decides to use them. It would be a problem for
polyfills though, which is why we'd probably want to go for some other
naming here. Say Str\contains instead of String\contains. (Worth noting
that this issue also exists with "PHP\Array" before PHP 8.0, so it's not a
problem that presence of a vendor prefix would resolve, outside specific
cases.)

One possible concern is what would happen if PHP implemented new
functionality that overlapped with a fairly well-known PECL/Composer
package.
E.g. if there was already a FooDB\Client in a composer/PECL package, and
an independent implementation was later added to php-src,
there'd potentially be conflicting names.
Being able to implement PHP\FooDB\Client would avoid that ambiguity

Then again, other programming languages such as Python have no issue
with that, so never mind.
FooDBClient\ or Foo\ or something could probably be used.

Right. For an existing PECL extension it would be best to just bundle it
instead of implementing a new one (even though that seems to be in fashion
recently...) But for the more general question, we should try to be
courteous and avoid collisions with important known libraries/extensions.
There's usually enough leeway with naming. If worst comes to worst, you can
always pull a mysql + mysqli :)

All symbols defined in the extension should be part of the top-level
namespace or a sub-namespace.

This should be clarified - do you mean the extension's top-level
namespace (e.g. OpenSSL) instead of the global namespace? I assume the
former.

Indeed, that's what I meant. I've added the extra word.

Regards,
Nikita

I've now added an explicit section regarding namespace collisions to the
RFC, and tweaked some of the examples (String\contains, Array\contains).

If there's no further feedback I'll open voting soon.

Regards,
Nikita

3 years ago by Larry Garfield — view source

unread

All symbols defined in the extension should be part of the top-level
namespace or a sub-namespace.

This should be clarified - do you mean the extension's top-level
namespace (e.g. OpenSSL) instead of the global namespace? I assume the
former.

Indeed, that's what I meant. I've added the extra word.

Regards,
Nikita

I've now added an explicit section regarding namespace collisions to the
RFC, and tweaked some of the examples (String\contains, Array\contains).

If there's no further feedback I'll open voting soon.

Regards,
Nikita

Thanks, Nikita.

Only one remaining question/comment/request from my end: In the "Migration of existing symbols" section, can you clarify explicitly that this RFC does not preclude such migration proposals in the future? The reading of the previous section could easily be taken in the future to mean "and existing code is stuck where it is forever", even if that's not the intent.

Eg, it's fine that the RFC does not propose mass-migrating all str_* functions to Str*, but if someone in the future proposes doing that migration (with shims/aliases), that should be able to stand on its own merits. I want to preempt anyone trying to respond in such a discussion "the original RFC said they wouldn't move, so you can't do this migration RFC now," because I'm sure someone will try to use that angle in the future should such a proposal appear. :-)

Thanks again.

--Larry Garfield

3 years ago by Nikita Popov — view source

unread

On Wed, Apr 14, 2021 at 5:39 PM Larry Garfield larry@garfieldtech.com
wrote:

All symbols defined in the extension should be part of the top-level
namespace or a sub-namespace.

This should be clarified - do you mean the extension's top-level
namespace (e.g. OpenSSL) instead of the global namespace? I assume the
former.

Indeed, that's what I meant. I've added the extra word.

Regards,
Nikita

I've now added an explicit section regarding namespace collisions to the
RFC, and tweaked some of the examples (String\contains, Array\contains).

If there's no further feedback I'll open voting soon.

Regards,
Nikita

Thanks, Nikita.

Only one remaining question/comment/request from my end: In the "Migration
of existing symbols" section, can you clarify explicitly that this RFC does
not preclude such migration proposals in the future? The reading of the
previous section could easily be taken in the future to mean "and existing
code is stuck where it is forever", even if that's not the intent.

Eg, it's fine that the RFC does not propose mass-migrating all str_*
functions to Str*, but if someone in the future proposes doing that
migration (with shims/aliases), that should be able to stand on its own
merits. I want to preempt anyone trying to respond in such a discussion
"the original RFC said they wouldn't move, so you can't do this migration
RFC now," because I'm sure someone will try to use that angle in the future
should such a proposal appear. :-)

Yeah, I definitely didn't want to imply that such a migration can't happen
in the future. I've now moved this into a "Future Scope" section (
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions#future_scope).
Hopefully that makes it clear that a followup RFC can deal with this
question.

Regards,
Nikita

3 years ago by G. P. B. — view source

unread

Hi internals,

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Regards,
Nikita

As one of the co-authors of one of the previously declined RFCs [1] and
author of the CSV extension, [2] where I changed from using prefixed
functions to a global class called CSV in the same fashion as FFI,
I quite like this proposal, and have no issue changing it to conform to
the RFC.

This sidesteps the issue of the PHP namespace in a very elegant way
by not creating a weird dichotomy for "core" (core/standard/SPL) functions,
if some of them start using namespaces as they'll only be one level deep
and the name is relevant to the functionality they provide.

Best regards,

George P. Banyard

[1] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php-namespace-in-core
[2]
https://gitlab.com/Girgias/csv-php-extension/-/commit/dc48b449543b07eaeff575bd143350693f808d74

3 years ago by Mike Schinkel — view source

unread

Hi internals,

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Hi Nikita,

Can I request/suggest that if we are going to take this approach that the RFC also adds an "advisory" registry for namespaces in the form of a Github repo with parallel README.md and namespaces.json files containing "registered" namespaces and a link for more information?

The benefit of such a registry would be to allow people who want to avoid using a namespace others are already using in public to find the list of namespaces for code that has been published publicly. Full stop.

For what I am proposing, the registry would NOT be used to stop people from using "registered" namespaces. They would be free to do so if they chose to. The registry would instead be for those who want to ensure their code is most likely to play nice with anyone else's code.

The registration process would be as simple as submitting a PR that includes the requested namespace added to both the README.md and the namespaces.json file along with a link for more information.

There would not be any approval process per se other than merging the PR, and there would not be any "owner" of the registration per se as registration would merely be a stake in the ground to recommend others not use that same namespace.

I'd suggest registration of really generic namespaces would be discouraged, but not disallowed.

I envision the link to more information would be a link to a git repo with either the code or information about the namespace in the README. If after a namespace is registered we find that other people/organizations are using the same namespace then the maintainers of the repo could choose to add multiple links to the same namespace.

Again, in summary, this list of "registrations" would be to allow people to easily find out if the namespace they want to use has already been used publicly by others, and if not to allow them to "register" it for their use.

If maintainers of the repo discover and PR behavior that is suspect, they could bring to the internals list to discuss a resolution. But unless and until that happens, governance of this registry would be as minimal as possible.

Is this something you can/will add to your RFC?

-Mike
P.S. If this existed it would be something PhpStorm (and VSCode) could probably use to help developers who find namespaces in code to be able to find out where they can learn more about those namespaces. And later, the git repo could publish a namespace.json with a lot more information about the namespace that could help PhpStorm offer even more help to developers. #justsaying

3 years ago by Christoph M. Becker — view source

unread

The registration process would be as simple as submitting a PR that includes the requested namespace added to both the README.md and the namespaces.json file along with a link for more information.

There would not be any approval process per se other than merging the PR, and there would not be any "owner" of the registration per se as registration would merely be a stake in the ground to recommend others not use that same namespace.

I wonder how long it would take for somebody to submit a PR which
registers several millions of arbitrary namespaces.

--
Christoph M. Becker

3 years ago by Mike Schinkel — view source

unread

The registration process would be as simple as submitting a PR that includes the requested namespace added to both the README.md and the namespaces.json file along with a link for more information.

There would not be any approval process per se other than merging the PR, and there would not be any "owner" of the registration per se as registration would merely be a stake in the ground to recommend others not use that same namespace.

I wonder how long it would take for somebody to submit a PR which
registers several millions of arbitrary namespaces.

A good bit longer than it would take to deny the PR and not merge it, I'm sure.

So I guess to be explicit, one namespace per PR.

-Mike

3 years ago by Nikita Popov — view source

unread

Hi internals,

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot
recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main
difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Hi Nikita,

Can I request/suggest that if we are going to take this approach that the
RFC also adds an "advisory" registry for namespaces in the form of a Github
repo with parallel README.md and namespaces.json files containing
"registered" namespaces and a link for more information?

The benefit of such a registry would be to allow people who want to avoid
using a namespace others are already using in public to find the list of
namespaces for code that has been published publicly. Full stop.

For what I am proposing, the registry would NOT be used to stop people
from using "registered" namespaces. They would be free to do so if they
chose to. The registry would instead be for those who want to ensure their
code is most likely to play nice with anyone else's code.

The registration process would be as simple as submitting a PR that
includes the requested namespace added to both the README.md and the
namespaces.json file along with a link for more information.

There would not be any approval process per se other than merging the PR,
and there would not be any "owner" of the registration per se as
registration would merely be a stake in the ground to recommend others not
use that same namespace.

I'd suggest registration of really generic namespaces would be
discouraged, but not disallowed.

I envision the link to more information would be a link to a git repo with
either the code or information about the namespace in the README. If after
a namespace is registered we find that other people/organizations are using
the same namespace then the maintainers of the repo could choose to add
multiple links to the same namespace.

Again, in summary, this list of "registrations" would be to allow people
to easily find out if the namespace they want to use has already been used
publicly by others, and if not to allow them to "register" it for their use.

If maintainers of the repo discover and PR behavior that is suspect, they
could bring to the internals list to discuss a resolution. But unless and
until that happens, governance of this registry would be as minimal as
possible.

Is this something you can/will add to your RFC?

-Mike
P.S. If this existed it would be something PhpStorm (and VSCode) could
probably use to help developers who find namespaces in code to be able to
find out where they can learn more about those namespaces. And later, the
git repo could publish a namespace.json with a lot more information about
the namespace that could help PhpStorm offer even more help to developers.
#justsaying

No, I am not willing to add a namespace registry to the RFC.

I do acknowledge that the lack of vendor prefix may make namespace
collisions more likely, although an important mitigating factor here is
that that userland libraries (unlike existing extensions) do typically use
a vendor namespace, and vendor namespaces usually do not collide with
component namespaces.

I also think that there should be some common courtesy involved in the
choice of namespaces -- if there is some really popular unvendored
open-source library out there that already uses some namespace prefix, we
definitely should consider that in our naming decisions. But I don't think
this needs any formal process of namespace registration, which creates
unnecessary bureaucracy and misaligned expectations. If your library is
important enough, then people will be aware of the issue. The converse also
holds.

Regards,
Nikita

3 years ago by Mike Schinkel — view source

unread

Hi internals,

The question of namespaces in the stdlib has been coming up a lot recently,
so I'd like to present my own stab at resolving this question:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions https://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaces_in_bundled_extensions

Relative to a number of previous (declined) proposals, the main difference
is that I do not propose a top-level "PHP" vendor namespace, and instead
recommend the use of "ExtName", in line with existing practice for
extensions. I believe this addresses the primary concern with previous
proposals.

Hi Nikita,

Can I request/suggest that if we are going to take this approach that the RFC also adds an "advisory" registry for namespaces in the form of a Github repo with parallel README.md and namespaces.json files containing "registered" namespaces and a link for more information?

The benefit of such a registry would be to allow people who want to avoid using a namespace others are already using in public to find the list of namespaces for code that has been published publicly. Full stop.

For what I am proposing, the registry would NOT be used to stop people from using "registered" namespaces. They would be free to do so if they chose to. The registry would instead be for those who want to ensure their code is most likely to play nice with anyone else's code.

The registration process would be as simple as submitting a PR that includes the requested namespace added to both the README.md and the namespaces.json file along with a link for more information.

There would not be any approval process per se other than merging the PR, and there would not be any "owner" of the registration per se as registration would merely be a stake in the ground to recommend others not use that same namespace.

I'd suggest registration of really generic namespaces would be discouraged, but not disallowed.

I envision the link to more information would be a link to a git repo with either the code or information about the namespace in the README. If after a namespace is registered we find that other people/organizations are using the same namespace then the maintainers of the repo could choose to add multiple links to the same namespace.

Again, in summary, this list of "registrations" would be to allow people to easily find out if the namespace they want to use has already been used publicly by others, and if not to allow them to "register" it for their use.

If maintainers of the repo discover and PR behavior that is suspect, they could bring to the internals list to discuss a resolution. But unless and until that happens, governance of this registry would be as minimal as possible.

Is this something you can/will add to your RFC?

-Mike
P.S. If this existed it would be something PhpStorm (and VSCode) could probably use to help developers who find namespaces in code to be able to find out where they can learn more about those namespaces. And later, the git repo could publish a namespace.json with a lot more information about the namespace that could help PhpStorm offer even more help to developers. #justsaying

No, I am not willing to add a namespace registry to the RFC.

I do acknowledge that the lack of vendor prefix may make namespace collisions more likely, although an important mitigating factor here is that that userland libraries (unlike existing extensions) do typically use a vendor namespace, and vendor namespaces usually do not collide with component namespaces.

I appreciate and respect your decision.

I also think that there should be some common courtesy involved in the choice of namespaces -- if there is some really popular unvendored open-source library out there that already uses some namespace prefix, we definitely should consider that in our naming decisions.

But I don't think this needs any formal process of namespace registration, which creates unnecessary bureaucracy and misaligned expectations. If your library is important enough, then people will be aware of the issue. The converse also holds.

But I do want to point out it can be difficult to discover namespaces that may conflict when they are not the main namespace for a popular open-source solution. So it sucks for the developer who wants to use two conflicting "not important enough" libraries.

But I do accept that this idea is a no-go in your RFC.

-Mike