Andy yes I was referring to the circular dependency issue. Catch-alls would be useful for this, though it would be nice if they were automated, eg returning a proxy until the module was used. Doing it manually by developer would be too difficult. I realize modules are intended to just satisfy a function body and can be initialized as objects or called as functions, but since they have strong container semantics I wonder if they should have more than just an 'id' especially if they provide a gateway to what else is in the directory as in commonjs.
Kam ________________________________ From: Andy Chu <[email protected]> To: Kam Kasravi <[email protected]> Cc: Brendan Eich <[email protected]>; kkasravi <[email protected]>; es-discuss <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, January 18, 2010 12:40:35 PM Subject: Re: Module system strawpersons On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Kam Kasravi <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, that looks right, I also remember a reference to the 'dot' notation > where namespace > access would be arbitrated implicitly by objects representing the '.' It may > have been in > one of Lars Hansen papers on gradual typing. In any case there was some good > discussion > on meta-level objects and controlling capabilities or access. > > Was there any discussion in the past about parameterized modules or > units where recursively nested modules/units were brought up? If two modules > refer to each other > and all imports are resolved eagerly then I think this would be a problem > where use cases would > abound. What are you referring to here? I think you are hinting at the problem of circular dependencies using "import" semantics like Python and CommonJS. Right now if you have mutually recursive modules, you get partially initialized modules, because the "program counter" just follows every require(). The CommonJS spec specifically allows the partially initialized modules I think. Personally I try to break up circular dependencies, but this behavior is not very friendly, so I think it would be better if Harmony supported circular dependencies in a more "correct" way. So this is an advantage of the "makers" style semantics (separating module definition and configuration). The Newspeak paper talks explicitly about this: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&source=hp&q=objects%20as%20modules%20in%20newspeak&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=ws If you are initializing modules in topological order, and there is a circular dependency between A and B, he says to just make a dummy proxy object for B to pass into A, initialize A, and then initialize B. That also reminds me that a good use case for catchalls is making module-like objects. I haven't seen any discussions of the 2 together but it's definitely worth thinking about how they interact. Andy
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