[fpc-pascal] Re: How to avoid namespace name clashes after USES ?

[Marcos Douglas]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be> wrote:
>
> Jürgen Hestermann wrote on Wed, 22 Aug 2012:
>
>
>> Am 2012-08-22 13:45, schrieb Lukasz Sokol:
>>>
>>> Recompilation when one of units/libraries was upgraded, almost always
>>> implies
>>> rebuild. Who on Earth is so trigger-happy to upgrade, rebuild and not
>>> test for
>>> regressions? This is the only sane way to get the process going -
>>> document it
>>> *as MML said below*;
>>
>>
>> That's not the point. Why on earth should a programmer *not* get as much
>> help as possible
>> from a programming language/compiler? That's the genuine purpose of a
>> programming language.
>
>
> Indeed.
>
>
>> Though I don't know whether it can be implemented easily (if at all).
>
>
> There are definitely some practical problems:
> * class/record helpers. The last class/record helper for a particular type
> that has come into scope automatically adds its methods to the helped
> class/record. If symbols can only be accessed by explicitly qualifying them
> with a separately specified unit alias, I don't see how you would "activate"
> class helpers from aliased units. Would these be an exception to the rule?
> Or would this require a new language construct to import all desired helper
> types explicitly?
> * Objective-Pascal categories are the same as class helpers, except that
> there an unlimited number of categories can be active for a single class at
> the same time. In the end, it's the same problem as above though.
> * Objective-Pascal also has the special "id" type. It is possible to call
> any method of any class type (and associated categories) in scope on a
> variable of this type. Again, I don't see a way how the proposed mechanism
> could be used to tell the compiler which classes it should search and which
> not if it should only search fully qualified identifiers from aliased units.
>
> There may be more issues, but these are the ones I can immediately think of.

At least you thought about it.  :)
Well, must be a solution, but this (new) feature should please
everyone first, I think.

Marcos Douglas