(I tried sending below message to the list but is still doesn't show up so if it eventually does: sorry for dup!)
There is already kind of a notion of protected module in Elixir: a module with `@moduledoc false`. Such module is e.g. not autocompleted in IEx. You're right however that all modules are globally accessible. I've recently encountered a SO answer [1] suggesting to use undocumented OTP :ram_file module and a prompt comment that since it's undocumented it *shouldn't* be depended upon. Thus, I think it's a good idea for xref to generate a warning in case of calling function from @moduledoc/@doc false outside of the OTP app. Especially if/when all BEAM languages store documentation chunks the same way. And of course, apply/3 is an escape hatch to silence the warning. I started looking into adding the warning into xref [2] and it looks pretty promising. One thing missing is my early implementation still emits warning for undocumented function even if it's inside the same OTP app - something I want to fix in the final version. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/22809265 [2] https://github.com/wojtekmach/elixir/tree/wm-xref-undocumented W dniu niedziela, 10 grudnia 2017 21:34:43 UTC+1 użytkownik Maciej Kaszubowski napisał: > > Hello, > > *What?* > > I would like to propose introducing a possibility to make a module > protected/private. Functions from such module would not be visible outside > of the OTP application they are defined in. > > *Why?* > > Currently, all modules included in the release are globally visible. This > makes it harder to enforce correct architectural boundaries because we have > no support from the compiler. We can only enforce the boundaries by being > careful or by running external scripts, but both solutions fall short when > the developers are under pressure or before deadlines. > > It would be nice if it was possible to create a module which can only be > accessed from the inside of a library/application where it's defined. We > have private functions, so it would be nice if we could do the same for > modules which are one abstraction level higher. This would allow to clearly > define a public interface for libraries/applications which would result in > better design. Since one of the recent Elixir goals is to help creating > maintainable software, I think this feature would be a really good step in > this direction. > > *Issues* > > Proposed behaviour could be problematic due to the fact that all Elixir > modules compile to Erlang modules which are all public. I came up with > three possible ways to handle this: > > 1. Compile all modules modules as usual (resulting in public Erlang > modules), but have Elixir compiler fail when the function from > private/protected module is called. > 2. Don't create Erlang modules from private/protected Elixir modules and > "copy" the functions to public modules that use them. > 3. Treat all modules are public and use mix xref task to validate this > behaviour outside of the compilation step. > > All of the solutions have advantages and disadvantages and maybe there are > some others which I didn't think of. > > I'll be happy to know what you think about this. > > Cheers, > Maciej > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elixir-lang-core" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elixir-lang-core/4898775d-e2d1-4d0a-96c1-f45ac3d2ebf5%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
