NamespaceObject attr_writer statements

[MSP-Greg]

I'm working on seeing if I can get YARD / yard-t2 to recognize 'attributes' based on method properties, rather than a declaration, etc.

Came across the following, which seemed rather odd, as most of their 'readers' operate on a larger collection (children), the attributes hash, etc.

  class NamespaceObject < Base
    attr_writer :constants, :cvars, :mixins, :child, :meths
    attr_writer :class_attributes, :instance_attributes
    attr_writer :included_constants, :included_meths

See:

https://github.com/lsegal/yard/blob/master/lib/yard/code_objects/namespace_object.rb#L9

Obviously, I could search the file for instance variables, test it, etc, then generate a PR. But, there are limits to what testing will find, and there may be a purpose that I'm unaware of. Hence, the comment / issue.

[lsegal]

It looks like those were accidentally turned into writers in 66b4e93. Doesn't look like any were ever intended to be writable. All those lines could be removed (but it would technically be a breaking change).

[MSP-Greg]

Maybe they should be left as is. After seeing you mention 'breaking change', I thought of the situation where someone could be subclassing NamespaceObject / ClassObject / ModuleObject, and expecting the writers to exist, along with replacing the reader method.

Maybe add a comment like 'These writers are not used by YARD and do not affect their respective reader functions. Provided for extensibility.'?

[lsegal]

Actually given the scenario here, I'm okay with removing the attributes. Although technically breaking, I would be really surprised if there was any code out there relying on these writers, since the code wouldn't be working correctly if it did.