[swift-evolution] [Discussion] Generic protocols

[Adrian Zubarev]

I think I might found a solution that will satisfy generic protocols and not break the system.

The generics manifesto shows two features that are requested from generic protocols.

The first feature is needed to reuse the same protocol multiple types like struct A : Proto<B>, Proto<C>.

With SE–0142 we can actually achieve this behavior by creating new protocols and set a subset of the associated types from its parent super protocol.

Now we can use this trick to solve the problem from above and create two new protocols and use them as we previously wanted struct A : ProtoB, ProtoC. While this is great and solves my issue I’d like to pitch a shortcut for this.

Protocols with associated types are kinda generic, but they still need SE–0142 to specify all the associated types.

How about making all protocols that contain associated types to also have a shortcut generic protocol that specifies all the associated type in its generic parameter list?

Some first bikeshedding:

protocol MyStringCollection : Collecntion where Iterator.Element == String, Index == Int {}

protocol Collection<ElementType, IndexType> : Collection {
     
    typealias Iterator.Element = ElementType
    typealias Index = IndexType
}
But instead of creating these types by yourself, the compiler would autogenerate these for any protocol that have a list of associated types. To prevent collision between protocol names like Collection vs. Collection<ParamList> one could automatically prefix the generated procols with Generic.

Collection will generate GenericCollection<Element, Index>

This would be a huge shortcut for the feature introduced in SE–0142.

What does the community think about this idea?



-- 
Adrian Zubarev
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Am 2. Dezember 2016 um 20:13:50, Charles Srstka (cocoadev at charlessoft.com) schrieb:

On Dec 2, 2016, at 12:34 PM, Adrian Zubarev via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

I just overlooked that the subsection about generic protocols was inside the Unlikely section.

The problem is that I need a way to refer to a function with a specific name. Plus the connection type has to have a specific API, like having a DispatchQueue and know the router object if there is any (sounds like a protocol right?!). The function reference should also keep the connection object alive with a strong reference. 

associatedtype does not solve that problem for me.

I clearly see that generic protocols overlap with associatedtype but couldn’t we find a compromise here? For instance like Chris Lattner introduced generic type aliases without the ability of constants.

Why don’t we just use angle brackets to specify associated types? Protocols aren’t using them for anything anyway. Then you could:

if let someSequence as? Sequence<Iterator.Element == Int> { // do something }

which would form a nice parallel to the syntax for casting things to generic types.

Charles

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