covariant attribute inference for all functions

[dlangBugzillaToGithub]

Martin Nowak (@MartinNowak) reported this on 2013-08-30T00:15:01Z

Transferred from https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10924

CC List

• Zach the Mystic

Description

The main reason why we can't perform attribute inference for all functions is separate compilation. Currently we only do it for functions where the source code must be available, i.e. template functions and auto return functions.
If we added an alias symbol from the mangling with annotated attributes to the one with inferred attributes an object could be linked with or without knowledge of the infered attributes/source code. This could be helpful to reduce the amount of annotation necessary within a library/project.

[dlangBugzillaToGithub]

reachzach commented on 2015-01-08T04:22:43Z

See my argument in favor of this enhancement here:

http://forum.dlang.org/thread/vlzwhhymkjgckgyoxlrq@forum.dlang.org

My suggested alternative to generating two links for each function is to introduce a linkage attribute (suggested names: "@api", "extern(noinfer)") to tell the compiler to mangle and generate .di signatures without the inferred attributes.

I'm having trouble understanding why fully inferred attributes are meeting so much resistance here:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/1877

Related issues:

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9914
https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13567