[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0068: Expanding Swift Self to class members and value types

[Dave Abrahams]

on Wed Apr 20 2016, Chris Lattner <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> Hello Swift community,
>
> The review of "SE-0068: Expanding Swift Self to class members and value types"
> begins now and runs through April 25. The proposal is available here:
>
> https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0068-universal-self.md

Caveat: somewhat scattered response, probably after insufficient
review; apply salt liberally.

This looks like a good idea overall to me, but I think it may leave
important uses for Self on the floor.  For example, I still want to
write this:

  struct SomeType {
    func f(x: Self) {}
  }

Does the proposal make that work in some way that I've overlooked?  

IMO it's a shame that you can't take a protocol body, dump it into your
type's body, and fill in the implementations to satisfy a conformance
without finding all the instances of “Self” and replacing them with your
type's name, and it would be sad if this proposal didn't address that
somehow.  In general, I'm concerned that we may be making “Self” mean
two very different things in different contexts: IIUC one is a type
that's fully-resolved at compile time, and the other one is a value that
holds a metatype.  If there were less of a wall between the two
uses/contexts, that would make the proposal more palatable to me.

-- 
Dave