[swift-evolution] [Mini-proposal] Require @nonobjc on members of @objc protocol extensions

[Kevin Lundberg]

I like this idea, but I would imagine that for an extension with many functions in it, requiring @nonobjc on each one would get tedious very fast. Could it be required (or at least allowed in addition to per-method annotations) at the extension level?:
	
	@objc protocol P {}
	
	@nonobjc extension P {
		func foo() { }
		func bar() { }
		func baz() { }
		func blah() { }		
		// etc...
	}

I don’t know if this would have specific implementation ramifications over only doing this on each method, if extensions cannot already be modified with attributes. I can’t think of a case where I’ve seen annotations added to protocol extensions, or any other extensions for that matter.


> On Jan 4, 2016, at 11:32 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> We currently have a bit of a surprise when one extends an @objc protocol:
> 
> @objc protocol P { }
> 
> extension P {
>   func bar() { }
> }
> 
> class C : NSObject { }
> 
> let c = C()
> print(c.respondsToSelector("bar")) // prints "false"
> 
> because the members of the extension are not exposed to the Objective-C runtime. 
> 
> There is no direct way to implement Objective-C entry points for protocol extensions. One would effectively have to install a category on every Objective-C root class [*] with the default implementation or somehow intercept all of the operations that might involve that selector. 
> 
> Alternately, and more simply, we could require @nonobjc on members of @objc protocol extensions, as an explicit indicator that the member is not exposed to Objective-C. It’ll eliminate surprise and, should we ever find both the mechanism and motivation to make default implementations of @objc protocol extension members work, we could easily remove the restriction at that time.
> 
> 	- Doug
> 
> [*] Assuming you can enumerate them, although NSObject and the hidden SwiftObject cover the 99%. Even so, that it’s correct either, because the root class itself might default such a method, and the category version would conflict with it, so...
> 
> _______________________________________________
> swift-evolution mailing list
> swift-evolution at swift.org
> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20160104/47282998/attachment.html>