To quote bugzilla 143: 'package' does not work at all
But even if worked as advertised, it'd still be broken.
Although it's a really useful concept that works great in Java, the
existing 'package' doesn't fit with D's directory-based module system.
As I see it, the problem is that, given:
module first.second.third.fourth;
which package is this module part of?
Is it 'third', 'second.third', or 'first.second.third'?
I think that _all_ of those can be reasonable project designs; but the
compiler has no way of working out which is intended.
The behaviour currently described in the spec, that 'fourth' can use
functions defined in 'first', is a particularly odd choice. If they were
structs, the behaviour would be the exact opposite:
struct first {
struct second {
struct third {
int fourth;
}
}
}
then first could access fourth, but fourth couldn't reach second. I
think that's _generally_ the most sensible for modules, as well.
I think there are two possibilities:
(1) We work out some decent semantics for 'package'; OR
(2) We decide there isn't time, and defer it to D3.
Maybe the solution is a simple as adding a 'package' field to the module
declaration. (eg,
module first.second.third.fourth package first.second;
)
But I fear that a major change to the module system might be required,
which wouldn't be viable at this late stage.
Option (2) is possible because 'package' has never actually worked. It
seems to be just a synonym for 'public' at present. Clearly, we can
survive without it, no matter how desirable it is.
