[swift-evolution] [Rejected] SE-0097: Normalizing naming for "negative" attributes

Trent Nadeau tanadeau at gmail.com
Mon Jun 6 13:24:08 CDT 2016


I created a draft proposal to make `@noescape` the default and created a
new email thread with subject "[Proposal] Make non-escaping closures the
default".

On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 1:22 AM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:

>
> On Jun 1, 2016, at 9:22 PM, Trent Nadeau <tanadeau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd like to write this proposal.
>
>
> Go for it!  Thanks,
>
> -Chris
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 12:11 AM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>> On Jun 1, 2016, at 9:02 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:
>> > 2) For noescape, the core team feels that the right solution is for
>> closure arguments to *default* to noescape, which means that the attribute
>> we should really need is @escaping.
>>
>> To provide some more details, this approach has the following advantages:
>>
>> - Most functional algorithms written in pure Swift will benefit because
>> they are naturally noescape.  The core team feels that this will reduce the
>> boilerplate involved with writing these algorithms.
>>
>> - The compiler has enough logic in it to provide a great QoI experience
>> when a developer doesn’t think about escaping, and tries to escape a
>> closure - it can provide a fixit that suggests adding @escaping.
>>
>> - Recent changes (to disallow escaping closures to close over an inout
>> parameter) are pushing the language to prefer noescape closures.  noescape
>> closures have also always been the preferred default, since they eliminate
>> a class of retain cycle issues.
>>
>> - "@autoclosure(escaping)" can be simplified and standardized to
>> "@autoclosure @escaping”
>>
>>
>> The two primary concerns with taking this direction were that it is would
>> adversely impact resilience, and that imported Objective-C APIs would be
>> too annoying to work with, because the compiler would have to be
>> conservative and assume they are escaping:
>>
>>
>>
>> On resilience, the concern with this approach is that an API may not
>> thinking about whether a closure parameter should be escaping or not, and
>> this behavior makes it possible that someone could write “V1” of an API and
>> not accidentally promise noescape semantics, but then need it in “V2” of
>> the same API.
>>
>> John McCall pointed out that resilience in the type system is different
>> than resilience in practice: An API changing to capture a closure and use
>> it long after it was originally passed is likely to break the clients
>> regardless of whether the type system captures this as an issue.  He argues
>> (and the argument is strong IMO) that it is *better* for resilient APIs to
>> default to @noescape, since that forces the author of V2 to think about
>> whether they are breaking their clients.  If they are doing something that
>> is “logically” noescape in their V2, then they can unsafe bitcast away the
>> escaping aspect of the closure.  This is better than changing the client’s
>> view of the API in any case.
>>
>>
>> On imported Objective-C API, the core team did a quick study of the Cocoa
>> APIs and found that most closure/block parameters are escaping in
>> practice.  As such, the core team feels that it isn’t overly burdensome to
>> ask that imported Objective-C APIs annotate their semantically noescape
>> block parameters with the clang __attribute__((noescape)) attribute.
>>
>>
>> I’m happy to write up this proposal, but won’t have cycles to do so for
>> several weeks.  If someone else wants to take it up, that would be great :-)
>>
>> -Chris
>> _______________________________________________
>> swift-evolution mailing list
>> swift-evolution at swift.org
>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Trent Nadeau
>
>
>


-- 
Trent Nadeau
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