[swift-evolution] [Proposal][Discussion] Modular Swift

[Brent Royal-Gordon]

> On Feb 20, 2017, at 5:56 PM, Robert Widmann via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> The semantics of some existing access control modifiers shall also be extended to support module declarations:
> 
> 	• open and public declarations are exported by a module for consumption by clients of the module.
> 	• internal declarations scope over the entire module and any derived submodules.

If I'm reading this correctly, you're proposing that the `internal` APIs in a submodule should *not* be accessible to enclosing modules. I also don't see any indication that you can control who is allowed to import a particular submodule.

That means that, if you use a submodule to encapsulate internal state, the APIs that are available to the parent module are *also* available to any rando who feels like importing your submodule. I don't think that's going to be a tenable design.

(I have a couple other objections—I think the keyword ought to be `submodule` if you don't need a top-level `module` declaration, I think there's a lot to be said for a single declaration covering the entire file, and I'm pretty iffy on this entire approach anyway—but this seems like the most serious problem of the bunch.)

-- 
Brent Royal-Gordon
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