Thanks, I will take some notes for a future “better code meta data” project.
For now I propose to merge the PR as a first step.
Marcus
> On 26 Jan 2023, at 18:52, Daniel Slomovits <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> A bit of perspective on other approaches to this problem:
>
> In Dolphin Smalltalk, the FFI mechanism uses #doesNotUnderstand: to implement
> getters and setters on external structs, so it already has a mechanism for
> ensuring they aren't flagged as unimplemented. In addition to the standard
> ClassDescription>>selectors, which is more-or-less the actual keys of the
> methodDictionary, there is #understoodSelectors, which is explicitly a hook
> to include others understood via #doesNotUnderstand:. These are then treated
> exactly as actually-implemented selectors, that is, they are available for
> autocomplete as well as not being flagged as unimplemented.
>
> Also, I believe the unimplemented-selectors rule applies only to
> non-self-sends, and there is a separate rule for self-sends which instead
> just asks the class if it #canUnderstand: the selector, which creates a
> middle ground where the selector is not "known" to the system at large, but
> won't be warned about if self-sent.
>
> The pragma approach has the advantage of being more specific, which is useful
> if a certain selector is valid only in a very narrow context and should still
> be warned about in general. Conversely, the disadvantage is that it needs to
> be repeated everywhere the message is sent, rather than centralized on the
> class where it is implemented/understood. I assume it also does not influence
> autocomplete. So, for cases that are valid in a broader scope, it creates the
> extra work of adding the pragma, and you have to type out the actual send
> manually, multiplied for each time it's used—lots of repetition.
> Fundamentally we're running up against the limitations of a dynamically-typed
> language here.
>
> Long story short, I think both options may be useful. In my own usage I find
> it's about 50/50—some cases of one-offs in a test, other cases of a
> widely-used class with some dynamic behavior. I do like the pragma as an
> improvement over rule banning for sure. Looking towards improving rule
> banning, I think it's very important for that to be (a) highly visible (and
> nothing is more visible than something that's part of the source code) and
> (b) manageable via source control (which metadata certainly can
> be—categories, for instance, already are). Call me old-fashioned, but for all
> the wonders of the image, there's something to be said for having a limited
> set of concepts in a "dead text" format that fully describe everything about
> the code—and if there are too many separate pieces of UI presenting
> information, it's easy to forget that some of them exist. But this is a
> discussion for another thread I think.
>
> On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 5:48 AM Marcus Denker <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> > On 26 Jan 2023, at 11:27, Marcus Denker <[email protected]
>> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> On 26 Jan 2023, at 11:21, Nicolas Anquetil <[email protected]
>> >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> correct me if I am wrong, but one can already deactivate a rule in
>> >> Nautilus on a perpackage/class/method basis.
>> >>
>> >> So why not use this mechanism instead of having yet another pragma
>> >>
>> >
>> > Because disabeling the rule disables it for *all* selectors
>> >
>> >> (there is a whole universe of pragmas hidden in the code)
>> >
>> > But the pragma is less hidden than the banned rule, which is completely
>> > invisible.
>> >
>>
>> The whole rule banning meta data storage is very very limited right now… e.g
>> it does never get cleaned, is never updated
>> if the code it annotates changes and has many problems.
>>
>> The long-term solution I want to do is to improve meta-data for code storage
>> and use it for the rule banning
>> and for things we might abuse pragmas now.
>>
>> But that will no be soon, and there are lots of things to be taken into
>> account for a nice design.
>>
>> For me the pragma is a nice intermediate solution: per selector, survives
>> rename of method, rename of
>> class, move method, is visible…
>>
>> Marcus
>>
