[Gambas-user] Idea for 3.17

[Christof Thalhofer]

Am 05.05.21 um 18:19 schrieb Bruce:

> As for java style naming, YUCK!

Namespaces are there to make my work available to other programmers as
libraries without breaking their software. If I publish my work in the
Gambas Software Farm people can only copy and paste it for their usage.
This is poor man's software sharing.

But if we introduce namespaces we have to do it in a way that we won't
destroy software on updates and which does not make the system
vulnerable because of using the wrong names:

Let's assume I write a class called 'Mail' and publish it so that others
can use it in their software. Let's also assume it becomes famous and a
lot of people use 'Mail'.

When I published it under the namespace 'Cocacola:Mail' then 'The
Coca-Cola Company' can later forbid the usage. So I will better publish
it under the name 'deganius.de' which is mine.

What if I change 'Deganius.de:Mail' in an incompatible way and publish
the changes? Will that break other software when the changes are
accidentally introduced by an update?

Some years ago I talked with an expert about namespaces in computer
languages and how to design it. He gave me these advices:

-----------------------------------------------------------

You have to set it up so that you can always find out what was included
and for what reasons.

Basics:

1. Align namespaces with domain names. Nowadays this is the easiest way
to avoid name conflicts in the first place. Alternatively, you can build
your own registry, but that is legally mined terrain because of
trademark law and sovereign fixed names (what should the registry do if
someone wants to have the namespace "UTF-8"?).

2. Possibility to declare module dependencies. There one can orient
oneself at the Dependencies of existing systems, e.g. the package
administrations of the Linux Distros (yum, pkg, dpkg etc.) and Maven.

3. Defaultpolicy: Once a module is published, it may never be changed
again. No bug fixes either - the old version is still needed for any
future bug diagnostics. If a new version needs to go out, the publisher
makes a new version number that becomes part of the module name.

Since the namespace is something global, there is a lot more to it than
just a bit of syntax.

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Personally I'm fine with Gambas as it is. But I have a few libraries
that might make the life of a database programmer a little easier that
I'd like to share. Doing this in a reliable way is currently impossible
with Gambas. That's why I find namespaces necessary.

Alles Gute

Christof Thalhofer

-- 
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