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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CALCITE-7288?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=18037881#comment-18037881
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Julian Hyde commented on CALCITE-7288:
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Coming late to this conversation, and agree with pretty much everything. The
visitor pattern has its compromises, one of which is that it doesn't easily
grow when new subtypes are added. That's OK in a monorepo (where you can find
and refactor all code that uses your visitor) but doesn't work for a public
utility class.
The "other" method isn't nice but it made the compromise workable, I think.
Other solutions to the problem are the reflective visitor and switch statements.
I would be fine if we created a {{RelShuttle2}} (or some better name) and
migrated Calcite code to use it.
No need to deprecate {{RelShuttle}}. We should document {{RelShuttle}}'s
limitations, and anyone not comfortable with those limitations should take
another route.
> Redesign RelShuttle
> -------------------
>
> Key: CALCITE-7288
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CALCITE-7288
> Project: Calcite
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Components: core
> Reporter: Dmitry Sysolyatin
> Priority: Major
>
> This task is mainly for discussion and comes from [1]. We have an interface
> called {{RelShuttle}} that tries to do two things at once. It tries to follow
> the proper visitor pattern, but at the same time it also has a common method:
> {code:java}
> RelNode visit(RelNode other);{code}
> It would be better to remove this method from the interface and correctly use
> the visitor pattern (as for example RexVisitor does). That means, if we have
> a class {{A}} that extends {{{}RelNode{}}}, then {{RelShuttle}} should have a
> method like:
> {code:java}
> RelShuttle.visit(A rel) {code}
> Main concern:
> When we add a new method to `RelShuttle` for example
> {{visit(LogicalSnapshot)}}, all LogicalSnapshot related code will start
> calling {{RelShuttle.visit(LogicalSnapshot)}} instead of
> {{RelShuttle.visit(RelNode other)}}. But users might already handle snapshots
> in their {{RelShuttle.visit(RelNode other)}} method (as it happens with
> {{HintCollector}}/{{RelHomogeneousShuttle}}). It can silently break their
> code. Even if they have tests, they might think everything is fine while some
> issues still go unnoticed.
> With a proper visitor pattern, this would result in a compile-time error
> rather than silent behavior that could take a long time to debug
> Another option is to have only a single {{visit(RelNode other)}} method (like
> {{RelHomogeneousShuttle}} does, though in a specific way) and use pattern
> matching inside it.
> *But both approaches should not be used together in the same interface.*
> [1] [https://github.com/apache/calcite/pull/4620]
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