[fpc-pascal] Ideas for namespace implementation

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Op 2010-07-26 10:14, Sven Barth het geskryf:
> 
> Regarding your ideas 2 and 3: as they are not Delphi compatible they 
> might be considered a "bad thing" (TM) by the FPC developers.

Currently FPC developers do not want to implement the "dotted" namespace
idea from Delphi - though they already stated there stance on Delphi
compatibly regarding this. In short - Delphi in-compatibility is not a
problem here, just like Generics or Compiler Modes or ..... FPC doesn't do
everything like Delphi, sometimes it does things _better_ than Delphi. FPC
Namespaces would hopefully fall under the latter.


> The problems of all three (or maybe all namespace ideas) is that they 
> aren't compatible to older versions of Delphi (and FPC).

I don't see this as a problem at all.

  * Currently they have unit name conflicts. No solution other than
    renaming the offending unit. Even if they introduced the "dotted"
    namespace idea from Delphi, it is not supported by FPC, so you
    still sit with a problem. You are forced to rename the unit. See
    the RxLib example.

  * Simply upgrade your FPC to a newer version. FPC is FREE. You don't
    have the burden of Delphi upgrade costs. FPC development is open,
    so you can prepare your code as you see things change in FPC, so
    that when a new version comes out, you already are compatible with
    it (again unlike Delphi - remember Unicode support in Delphi. Users
    had no warning of its syntax and required changes until AFTER Delphi
    was released.).


> Regarding your idea 3:
> As FPC can use different directories for the search paths how would you 
> solve similar hierarchies?

Idea 3 is crap - I see lots of issues too, but thought I would mention it
simply because that is what JAVA uses.



Regards,
  - Graeme -

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