[swift-evolution] stored properties in extensions (was: associated objects)

[Haravikk]

> On 15 Oct 2016, at 02:01, Paul Cantrell via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Oct 9, 2016, at 3:43 PM, Charles Srstka via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Let extensions introduce stored properties, but only in the same module as the type’s definition. Then, the compiler can just take any extensions into consideration when it’s determining the size of the type, just as if the properties had been declared in the type. Declaring stored properties on an extension outside of the type’s module results in a compiler error, exactly as today. This would, without any performance drawbacks, solve one of the big problems that people are hoping to solve via stored properties in extensions—the ability to organize members by protocol conformance.
> 
> Yes please! A big strong +1 to this from me. I can think of several specific chunks of problem code that this would clean up immensely.

+1 from me too for internal extensions; I think this is the logical place to start for now so we can see how many use cases this actually covers. Personally I don't try to add functionality to types from other libraries, and when I have to I try as much as possible to do it via wrapping; obviously this doesn't cover the async type cases and others where it'd be hard to re-wrap the values, but I think I'd like to know more about how common such cases actually are.

However, allowing stored properties in local extensions is an absolute must for a first step, and would be very useful as a first step.


The problem I have with doing it for external types is that I just don't see how it can be done efficiently; associated objects means looking up the object to find what its associated values are, which isn't a negligible cost if you're doing it frequently, and it makes me very uncomfortable to think of hiding what is actually happening, as developers may think they're just using a regular property without really appreciating the actual costs involved. At the very least they need to handled through a .associated property or whatever to make it much clearer that these aren't native properties in the normal sense.