[swift-evolution] [Discussion] Generic protocols

[Adrian Zubarev]

There is one thing that I want to point out with pitched syntactic sugar. GenericMyProtocolName<U> will also let you reuse T within a generic type, where currently we cannot nest protocols into types. Even if we could, it’s not clear if nested declarations like protocol MyTProtocolName : MyProtocolName where U == T would be possible, so that T from the outer generic type is accessible.

Autogenerating the only possible generic protocols from protocols with associated types as a syntactic sugar to reduce spawning of types like IntFoo (as previously showed) seems reasonable to me. It does not break the current protocol system, but solves the first generic protocol feature from the generics manifesto.

There are still a few more questioned to answer:

How dow we want the generated parameter list to look like?
Can we drop Generic prefix without collisions?
Does this syntactic sugar improves the stdlib or affect ABI?
There are probably some more questions I cannot foresee by myself. Feel free to jump in the discussion. ;)

PS: Yes this syntactic sugar does create an alternative way of creating ‘kinda’ the same protocol twice, but it reuses the pattern more naturally.

protocol Foo { associatetype Inner : SomeOtherProtocol }

// Assuming String and Int conforms to SomeOtherProtocol
protocol StringFoo : Foo where Inner == String {}  
protocol IntFoo : Foo where Inner == Int {}  

// VS.

// autogenerated  
procotol GenericFoo<Inner : SomeOtherProtocol> : Foo { … }

// usage
GenericFoo<String>
GenericFoo<Int>

// or
typealias StringFoo = GenericFoo<String>
typealias IntFoo = GenericFoo<Int>


-- 
Adrian Zubarev
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Am 3. Dezember 2016 um 16:43:43, Daniel Leping (daniel at crossroadlabs.xyz) schrieb:

In general I'm very positive with
the idea of generic protocols. This discussion is more about
syntactic sugar, though I really like where it goes.



Off topic:

IMO, we should revisit approaches others already use for conflicts
resolution. I personally tend to get something similar to Scala
traits. Should fit POT smoothly and naturally.

On Sat, 3 Dec 2016 at 16:30 Adrian Zubarev <adrian.zubarev at devandartist.com> wrote:
If I’m not mistaken here, extension Foo where T == Int will have an error of redeclaration foo anyways.


-- 
Adrian Zubarev
Sent with Airmail

Am 3. Dezember 2016 um 15:22:56, Adrian Zubarev (adrian.zubarev at devandartist.com) schrieb:

extension Foo where T == Int {
     func foo() {
          self.bar(o: 42) // calls a function that accepts an Int
     }
}
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