[swift-evolution] [Draft] Automatically deriving Equatable and Hashable for certain value types

[Pedro Vieira]

I really think this would be a great addition to Swift. Although, I don't
see the need to use a new keyword `deriving` for this feature.
The following would be enough:

struct Foo: Equatable, Hashable {
  ...
}

It's explicit and it uses features already in the language. With this, the
compiler would generate all the functions needed for `Foo` to conform to
`Equatable` and `Hashable` and, in case the developer wants custom behavior
on any of those functions, he/she could just write it from scratch and the
compiler would use it over the generated one.

Michael Peternell via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> escreveu
no dia quinta, 26/05/2016 às 10:58:

> Can we just copy&paste the solution from Haskell instead of creating our
> own? It's just better in every aspect. Deriving `Equatable` and `Hashable`
> would become
>
> struct Polygon deriving Equatable, Hashable {
>     ...
> }
>
> This has several advantages:
> - you don't have to guess wether `Equatable` or `Hashable` should be
> automatically derived or not.
> - Deriving becomes an explicit choice.
> - If you need a custom `Equatable` implementation (for whatever reason),
> you can still do it.
> - It doesn't break any code that is unaware of the change
> - It can be extended in future versions of Swift, without introducing any
> new incompatibilities. For example, `CustomStringConvertible` could be
> derived just as easily.
> - It is compatible with generics. E.g. `struct Shape<T> deriving
> Equatable` will make every `Shape<X>` equatable if `X` is equatable. But if
> `X` is not equatable, `Shape<X>` can be used as well. (Unless `X` is not
> used, in which case every `Shape<T>` would be equatable. Unless something
> in the definition of `Shape` makes deriving `Equatable` impossible => this
> produces an error.)
> - It is proven to work in production.
>
> -Michael
>

Pedro Vieira
http://pedrovieira.me
-- 
Pedro Vieira
http://pedrovieira.me
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