Design Meeting Notes for 12/4/2015

[DanielRosenwasser]

Allow type parameter constraints to reference other type parameters (#2304)

• Pre 1.0, used to be that we could allow you to write something like class Foo<T extends X, U extends T>

  • Had too many issues with infinitely diving in to types.
  • Disabled it, and so the TypeScript 1.1 rewrite had the same restriction.
  • Need to do some checking up front to avoid these circularities.
  • Though it's not that simple; what's the apparent type of T here?

  class Foo<T extends Foo<T>> {
  }

  though this is solved.

  • Where it gets interesting.

  function bar<T extends Foo<T>>(x: T): T {
  }

  when writing bar(expr), we expect to infer a types of T from expr.
  We then need to check the constraint for T against Foo<T>.

  • How should this work when inference fails?
  • Couldn't we just infer any when we can't resolve things?
    • Anders tried that, but then you end up inferring any for almost every type parameter of this form which is undesirable
  • We could resolve a failed inference for T extends Foo<T> with Foo<{}>
    • But that's not compatible.
    • Kind of weird to allow that.
    • But inference is never supposed to "fail", so what else can we do?

• Inferring from union types

  function extract<T>(x: T | string): T { /*...*/ }
  
  var x: string | string[];
  var y = extract(x);

  • We decided to adopt the policy that we remove string from the union type and just infer string[] for T.
  • This is because the two types are identical.
  • What if we had a recursive call?

  function extract<T>(x: T | string): T {
      var z = extract(x);
  }

  * Right now we refer the type of `z` to be `{}`.
  * Changes to union type inference will make us infer the type of `z` to be `T`.
  

  • Regression caused by implicit type parameters

    class C {
    
    }
    var x: C;

    is implicitly of like writing

    class C<this> {
    
    }
    var x: C<C>;

    • Internally, C has type flags indicating that it is both a class and a reference (TypeFlags.Class and TypeFlags.Reference).
    • Internally, this is just represented by having 1 extra type argument than the number of type parameters.
    • Caused a regression.
    • Anders fixed it.
    • Did we add it to the real world code suite?
    • No.
    • We should.

Enum compatibility - continued (#1748)

• Dicsussed it a bit last time.
• Discussion from last time was inconclusive.
• We have a request to make enums structurally compatible.
  • Why is this a problem?
  • Two packages that use the same enum from a .d.ts that they depend on.
  • TypeScript has this issue when using its own API as well as TSLint's.
  • Alternative is to consider some form of "tagging".
    • e.g. use some sort of GUID to indicate enums are compatible.
      • Weird - a very "opt-in" behavior.
      • This is often the desired default behavior.
        • If this needs to become common practice, it makes enums awkward and daunting.
      • Easy "gotcha".
  • What makes two enums "compatible"?
    • Same name?
      • That's odd.
      • We don't do that anywhere else.
    • Same property names?
      • Should those matter?
      • But what about when v2 of a library adds enum members to v1?
        • But it seems like those libraries aren't compatible anyway, so the two enums are incompatible.
      • What about when you want to supply a "public" version of your enum?
    • What about just the values?
      • Surprise! People hate that.
    • Being const enums with equivalent values?
      • But that leaves enums out in the rain.
      • Const enums can never have "floating dependency versions".
        • e.g. when writing a library for TypeScript that depends on TypeScript, you need to lock down on the version you compiled against.
        • Regular enums are better for this because you never have to think about this as long as the members still exist due to late binding.
    • If we used property names, we'd need to restrict the assignability of the individual members themselves.
      • What if each enum member had an implicit "parent"?
        • That way when comparing Direction.Right to Moral.Right, we need to check if Direction and Moral are structurally compatible as well.
    • What about directionality?
      • Is the one with fewer members assignable to the enum with more members?
      • What is the motivating example for directionality?
        • When depending on a library that depends on us where we've hidden part of our own API.
        • What if we had "enum merging" to split out public and private portions?
          • Team seems frightened by this, I will never bring this up again.
    • Order?
      • No, ordering is a red herring. Values are really what we're interested in.
    • Let's just get an implementation going so we can make decisions on that.
    • More or less, seems like we're interested in enums needing the same members with identical name/value pairs.
    • Lingering question: do we require the enum declaration name to be identical?
      • You don't want Volume and Weight to be compatible.
      • Weird that we recognize the value of nominal checking, but only want to apply it to enums.

[weswigham]

Team seems frightened by this, I will never bring this up again.

😨