I was going to write up a detailed response to this as well, but Chris did it for me.
In general, I agree that we need the feature. However, I believe that the name “ABI” is too specific and does not accomplish the primary purpose of naming this thing — which is to allow people to understand what it means by reading it. I agree that scoping these attributes inside the availability declaration is the best option. As a framework author, the notion of availability is of primary importance, and having things which affect how my clients see my code be part of that general concept makes the most sense. My second choice would be to scope it inside the “public” declaration, as in: public public(inlinable) public(external) // *where we define external to be what abiPublic is now — more bike shedding welcome - Tony > On Dec 20, 2017, at 11:14 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution > <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > >> On Dec 20, 2017, at 4:19 PM, Ted Kremenek <kreme...@apple.com >> <mailto:kreme...@apple.com>> wrote: >> >> The review of "SE-0193 - Cross-module inlining and specialization" begins >> now and runs through January 5, 2018. >> >> The proposal is available here: >> >> https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0193-cross-module-inlining-and-specialization.md >> >> <https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0193-cross-module-inlining-and-specialization.md> >> When reviewing a proposal, here are some questions to consider: >> >> What is your evaluation of the proposal? >> > I am hugely supportive of the features that these attributes enable, but I > think that the spelling of this is absolutely wrong, and I’m disappointed > that the extensive discussion we’ve had for months about this didn’t make it > into (at least) the alternatives considered section. Here are my concerns: > > Availability Ranges > > Both of these attributes will (perhaps not for Swift 5 given the fact that > these will be new then, but certainly in 5.1 or 6) need to be qualified by > deployment modifiers. We’ll need the ability to specify not just that a > declaration is inlinable or abipublic, but in *which versions* of the binary > package (that they are defined in) have this property. > > For example, while perhaps it will be common for a decl to be “born > inlinable” and just need the form of attribute as specified here, it is just > as clear that this is not the *only* model we need. It is entirely > reasonable (and will be important in the future) to say that something > “became ABI public in iOS14, became abiPublic in iOS 15, and became inlinable > in iOS16”. The use of this will be relatively rare, but it is important for > the model to support this in time. > > Because of this, if we accept the spelling as proposed in this proposal, > these attributes will need to be generalized to have an availability range, > e.g.: > > @abipublic(iOS 15, *) > > The concern is that this proposal opens the door to have a family of > attributes each of which have availability information on them, and this > “family” of attributes will have nothing tying them together into a unified > framework. > > > Pollution of the Attribute Namespace > > Furthermore, these two attributes are the tip of the iceberg, and the core > team has spent a lot of time recently discussing the fact there are > potentially going to be about a dozen attributes similar to these > (fixed_contents, global_var_is_directly_addressible, …) that will only be > required for binary frameworks. It is possible that @inlinable will be > prominent enough to be a global attribute (I personally am not sure if it > will be commonly used or not, it depends a lot on how widely used binary > frameworks are). That said, it is clear @abiPublic will not be commonly > used, and many attributes that follow these will be even more obscure. > > This is bad for three reasons: > > 1) we’re polluting the general attribute namespace with obscure things. > Pollution of the attribute namespace may have a marginal impact today, but > will start to matter if/when we ever get user defined attributes. > > 2) The other reason is that this provides no general framework to tie > together these things that affect binary frameworks into a unified framework. > > > 3) Furthermore, I don’t like attributes being a dumping ground for weird > performance hacks required by binary frameworks. It is a practical necessity > that we support these because they are extremely important for narrow cases, > but we don’t need to put them into a syntactically prominent spot in the > grammar. > > The name “ABI” > > A minor point, but the specific name “abiPublic” is not great in my opinion, > because “ABI” is a term of art for compiler hackers. Most users have no idea > what ABI means, and those who think they do often don’t. Very few people > really understand what “stable ABI” means for example. > > It would be better to go with something like “apiPublic” or “symbolPublic” or > “linkableButNotAccessible” or something else long. This will not be commonly > used in user code, so being long and descriptive is a good thing. > > > Counterproposal: > > There is a simple way to address the two concerns above: we already have a > framework for handling API evolution with binary frameworks, the @available > attribute. We can spell these “attributes” as: > > @available(inlinable) // this symbol has been inlinable since it was > introduced > > which generalizes properly when we add version ranges: > > @available(iOS 14, *) // this was introduced in iOS 14 > @available(linkerSymbol: iOS 15, *) // this decl’s symbol became > “abiPublic" in iOS 15 > @available(inlinable: iOS 16, *) // this decl became inlinable in iOS > 16 > public func foo() {… } > > and allows us to bury weird hacks like “abiPublic” and the other even more > obscure things that are coming outside of the global attribute namespace: > > @available(global_var_is_directly_accessible: iOS 15, *) > public var myDispatchOnceToken : ... > > > Given this unified framework for handling ABI evolution, we can then > separately discuss which ones of these proposals are common and important > enough to sugar into a top level attribute. For example, given the general > model for inlinable above, we could then (possibly as a later proposal) > introduce: > > @inlinable // this symbol has been inlinable since it was introduced > public func foo() > > as sugar for: > > @available(inlinable) > public func foo() > > … which means that the sugar forms can be separately debated, and that the > sugar forms don’t have to permit the full complexity of the general case (the > availability list). It still isn’t clear to me whether @inlinable meets the > bar to be a global attribute, I can see both sides of that argument, and it > seems valuable to be able to separate the engineering work to introduce the > feature from the bikeshed discussion about whether it should be sugared or > not. > > > In short, respectfully request that you at least add this approach to the > "alternatives considered” section. I also suggest you strongly consider > pursuing this direction. It solves the same problem as your proposal but: > > - scales better as we add more “attributes" in the future - which will be of > increasingly narrow applicability. > - provides a unifying model for all of the binary framework hints > - puts all the availability markup into the feature we already have for this. > - provides a better naming framework for things like abiPublic, because you > can say "@available(linkerSymbol)” to say that this is making the linker > symbol available from the binary framework. > > -Chris > > > > > > > >> >> Is the problem being addressed significant enough to warrant a change to >> Swift? >> >> Does this proposal fit well with the feel and direction of Swift? >> >> If you have used other languages or libraries with a similar feature, how do >> you feel that this proposal compares to those? >> >> How much effort did you put into your review? A glance, a quick reading, or >> an in-depth study? >> >> Thanks, >> Ted Kremenek >> Review Manager >> >> _______________________________________________ >> swift-evolution-announce mailing list >> swift-evolution-annou...@swift.org >> <mailto:swift-evolution-annou...@swift.org> >> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution-announce >> <https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution-announce> > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org> > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution > <https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution>
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