[swift-evolution] [Proposal] Refactor Metatypes, repurpose T[dot]self and Mirror

[Adrian Zubarev]

I’m not sure about the name “Metatype” and the relationship with “Type”
About the name. Metatypes are documented but they are types of its own kind and are mostly used in cases like:

// Current Swift 2.2

metatype.staticFunction // also equivalent to T.staticFunction
metatype.staticComputedProperty // also equivalent to T.staticComputedProperty
metatype.init // also equivalent to T.init

// And without metatypes like they are build in Swift (at least T.Type variant):
// We couldn't build these neat looking api's like
struct A {
    static var neat: SomethingNeat.Type {
        return SomethingNeat.self
    }
}
struct SomethingNeat {
     
    init() {}
}

let neat: SomethingNeat = A.neat.init()
With this proposal we would like to discourage the most (not every) use of metatypes and make their existence and functionality crystal clear for everyone.

However, Type<T> captures the type literal, it’s lightweight because it’s completely lazy and has no stored properties. It also provides an access to the metatype whenever you may need it (mostly in cases of API design, so do I believe) and type related footprints like size, stride and alignment which are calculated internally from the metatype of the captured T literal.

And something like Int.self will finally become Hashable which is really handy.



-- 
Adrian Zubarev
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Am 20. Juli 2016 um 04:30:38, Karl (razielim at gmail.com) schrieb:

I’m not sure about the name “Metatype” and the relationship with “Type”
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