[swift-evolution] [Swift 4.0] Conditional conformances via protocol extensions

[Paul Cantrell]

> On Aug 11, 2016, at 9:39 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> FWIW, I'm planning to write a complete proposal for conditional conformances and will start posting drafts once it is far enough along to be useful.

I’m looking forward to that!

I’ll throw a potential use case for this your way, both one of the most obvious and one of the nastiest I’ve encountered, in case it helps refine the proposal and/or clarify its limits:

    // No more runtime exceptions from things buried in
    // dictionaries! Wouldn’t it be nice?

    protocol JSONRepresentable { }

    // So far so good:

    extension String: JSONRepresentable { }

    // Hmm, extending protocols is out:

    extension Integer: JSONRepresentable { }
    extension FloatingPoint: JSONRepresentable { }

    // I can imagine a universe where this works:

    extension Optional: JSONRepresentable
        where Wrapped: JSONRepresentable { }

    // ...but this, oh dear:

    extension Optional.None: JSONRepresentable { }

    // Collection would be better but ... extending protocols again:

    extension Array: JSONRepresentable
        where Element: JSONRepresentable { }

    extension Dictionary: JSONRepresentable
        where Key == String, Value: JSONRepresentable { }

I imagine this is all a bridge too far for a proposal at this time — and maybe a bridge too far for any conditional protocol conformance ever — but it seems like it needs addressing.

> It won't have support for protocols conforming to other protocols, though. 

Curious. Why not? (I’ll happily wait for the proposal if you explain it there.)

Cheers,

Paul

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