[swift-evolution] Enhanced Existentials

Douglas Gregor dgregor at apple.com
Tue Jan 17 17:27:47 CST 2017


> On Jan 10, 2017, at 10:21 PM, David Hart <david at hartbit.com> wrote:
> 
> What do you think I should do then? Start an official proposal for Superclass + Protocol because that’s all we can afford to have for Swift 4 or bug Austin to resubmit his full proposal?

I think it makes sense to split out the more-Swift-4-critical Superclass + Protocol bit, because it affects the import of Objective-C APIs in a manner that breaks source code. Reading the tea leaves, I can’t imagine having time to implement the full generalized-extensions proposal in Swift 4.

	- Doug

> 
> David.
> 
>> On 11 Jan 2017, at 00:09, Douglas Gregor <dgregor at apple.com <mailto:dgregor at apple.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 8, 2017, at 8:21 AM, David Hart <david at hartbit.com <mailto:david at hartbit.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 8 Jan 2017, at 06:17, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 6, 2017, at 11:04 PM, Russ Bishop <xenadu at gmail.com <mailto:xenadu at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Jan 4, 2017, at 8:48 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Would love to see this come forward into discussion.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yeah. I'm less sure about the other enhancements to existentials fitting into Swift 4, e.g., the creation of existentials for protocols with associated types. Although important, it's a big feature that will take a bunch of design and implementation time, and I'm leery of accepting something that we might not actually be able to achieve. 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> - Doug
>>>>> 
>>>>> By this are you referring to generalized existentials?
>>>> 
>>>> Yes. I actually prefer the term "generalized existentials".
>>>> 
>>>>> If so I’ll say this is such a constant pain point and perverts so many API designs… not to mention vomiting AnyXYZ type-erased wrappers everywhere… In my completely non-authoritative personal opinion we shouldn’t ship Swift 4 without it :)
>>>> 
>>>> To be absolutely clear, I think this is an extremely important feature. It's also a significant undertaking in both design and implementation. 
>>> 
>>> Hasn't most of the design work already been done by Austin and all those participating back then? What is missing? How much of the original proposal is possible to implement in the Swift 4 (on top of Superclass + Protocol)? Just want some hints on how to drive this so we can get as much of generalized existentials for Swift 4.
>> 
>> 
>> Yes, that’s fair: the proposal is in excellent shape, and I (personally) agree with most (maybe all) of the design decisions in it.
>> 
>> 	- Doug
>> 
> 

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