Are Techs Components?

[gkatsev]

While working on trying to make a generic solution for #2767 I ran into a problem creating components from a list of names. Namely, there isn't a good way to know whether a component is a component or a tech. There is also (at least) one major difference between the two -- a component takes the player and options as arguments but techs take options and ready as arguments. Meaning that you can initialize a tech and a regular component dynamically the same way.
So, the question is whether we should be registering Techs as components or do we need a tech registry?

let componentName = 'Button';
let C = Component.getComponent(componentName);
let c = new C(player, options);

componentName = 'Html5';
C = Component.getComponent(componentName);
c = new C(player, options);  // error in some cases since Html5 assumes that the player is the options

[dmlap]

My feeling: based on the re-arch of techs we did in 5.0, it doesn't make sense for Techs to be Components. They have a lot in common but we did intentionally choose not to pass Techs references to the player.

[misteroneill]

I'm with @dmlap - things that are the same should be the same, things that are different should be obviously different.

[gkatsev]

I agree. Unfortunately, we can't remove Html5 and Flash from the component registration currently because semver.
Should we add a registerTech/getTech to mirror components in a future minor update?

[misteroneill]

I think that makes sense.

I guess that means until 6.0, registerTech/getTech would also register the tech as a component and getComponent would call getTech if no component is found.

[gkatsev]

we only need to maintain the compat for the built-in techs, Html5 and Flash. So, we could just register both as Techs and Components but have others only register Techs as Techs and not Components.

[gkatsev]

I have a PR for this: #2782