Re: [RFC] Namespace-scoped declares, again

On 13/12/2017 07:12, Michał Brzuchalski wrote:

Andreas, we're touching namespaces which is a hard subject, but if I could fly away with my thoughts I'd propose to introduce something called for eg. a package

My thoughts were actually going along the same lines: basically, the current implementation of namespaces is, I think by design, very conservative in what a namespace represents. A namespace doesn't have any identity, and doesn't have any codified structure, it's just a shorthand for referring to similarly named classes (plus functions and constants). There are several things that I think would feel more natural with "packages" than namespaces as they exist today: - Declare directives, as discussed here - Visibility modifiers, e.g. a "private class", accessible only within its package - Per-package autoloaders, that only get called for classes in that package, rather than a global autoloader which parses out the prefixes it's interested in - An autoloader callback that fires once for each package, to setup these options Another difference is that namespaces tend to form deep hierarchies, but you're unlikely to set options at every level of the hierarchy. For instance, you probably don't want to set strict_types on for Acme\MyPackage\Input but off for Acme\MyPackage\Output. So a separate syntax to mark which level is the "package" would reduce the number of places a setting could be set, which would reduce the number of places you'd need to look - a bit like having Apache settings in a VirtualHost for the whole site, rather than .htaccess files in every directory. All that being said, I'm not 100% convinced this is solving a real problem. Yes, the option has to be set in every file, but that's because it effects the way that file is compiled, and the compiler sees one file at a time. The same applies to the "namespace" directive, which you might otherwise set against a particular directory. I don't see a pressing need to add the complexity. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]