[swift-evolution] A case for postponing ABI stability

[Matthew Johnson]

> On Jan 26, 2017, at 3:10 PM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> on Thu Jan 26 2017, David Hart <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> Thanks Michael for the manifesto. It definitely made quite a few things clearer for me.
>> 
>> Concerning the topic of when ABI stability should happen, I still have
>> a strong feelings that Swift 4 might not be the best time for
>> it. Concerning Data Layout, Type Metadata, Mangling, the Calling
>> Convention and the Runtime, I don’t know enough about them to
>> comment. I’m really centring my discussion on the Standard Library.
>> 
>> If we look back at the evolution of the Standard Library for Swift 3,
>> they were many changes. And I’m personally very happy with the
>> thoughtful design that went into those. But they are still a few
>> gotchas, which is to be expected when so many changes are made at
>> once. But we only discover them once the thousands of Swift developers
>> start using those APIs.
>> 
>> I just worry that all the big changes that will come for Swift 4 won’t
>> have time to mature. Furthermore, it seems like several extra compiler
>> features which won’t happen in Swift 4 are really necessary to
>> simplify the Standard Library surface area. I’m specifically thinking
>> of type constraints on Existentials which would allow us to get rid of
>> all the Any* structs and replace them with typedefs. But I’m sure
>> there are more examples like those which are just waiting for the
>> generics to become powerful enough to express APIs more elegantly.
>> 
>> Perhaps someone from the Standard Library team can chime in to give us
>> their opinion on this topic.
> 
> I have had exactly the same worry for quite some time.  We're still
> waiting for many basic components of the generics system, and, if our
> experience with protocol extensions is any guide, before we have those
> features in hand, it will be impossible to anticipate the design changes
> we'd want to make to the standard library... and that cuts against the
> grain of *source* (to say nothing of ABI) stability.
> 
> So far I've been unable to form a mental model for what source and/or
> ABI stability actually means for our ability to make changes to the
> standard library in the future.  It's possible that we discover a
> workable path forward, but it's equally possible that we find ourselves
> painted into a corner.

I hope we can all agree that the last thing we want to do is get painted into a corner.  IMO we should be very sure that won’t happen before making a firm commitment to lock down ABI stability.

> 
> -- 
> -Dave
> 
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