(no title)
Sukera | 2 years ago
My own efforts (shameless plug, https://github.com/Seelengrab/PropCheck.jl for property based testing inspired by Hedgehog and https://github.com/Seelengrab/RequiredInterfaces.jl for somewhat formalizing "what methods are needed to subtype an abstract type") are unused in the wider community as far as I can tell, in spite of people speaking highly of them when coming across them. I also don't think Kenos InterfaceSpecs.jl is the way forward either - I think there's quite a lot of design space left in the typesystem the language could do without reaching for z3 and other SAT/SMT solvers. I personally attribute the lack of progress on that front to the lack of coherent direction of the project at large (and specifically not to the failings of individuals - folks are always very busy with their lives outside of Julia development/other priorities). In spite of the fact that making this single area better could be a big boon with more traditional software engineers, which are very underrepresented in the community.
ChrisRackauckas|2 years ago
* New trait systems define the allowed inputs into given solvers in order to enforce guarantees https://sciml.ai/news/2022/10/08/error_messages/
* The SciMLOperators.jl interface clarified operators (https://docs.sciml.ai/SciMLOperators/stable/interface/) * The highest level SciMLBase interface got codified (https://docs.sciml.ai/SciMLBase/stable/) along with the trait systems it requires.
* ArrayInterface.jl (https://docs.sciml.ai/ArrayInterface/stable/) and StaticArrayInterface.jl (https://docs.sciml.ai/StaticArrayInterface/stable/) have dropped fallback definitions and require definition of traits for downstream packages in order for any array types to be allowed into package functions
* SciMLStyle (https://github.com/SciML/SciMLStyle) came into existence and defines a style which avoids any of the behaviors seen in the blog post.
* Julia came out with package extensions in v1.9 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiIZlQhFzyk) and with the interface checking, implicit interface support was turned mostly into explicit interface support where packages and types opt-in via defining traits (this is still continuing to evolve but is mostly there).
Given all of these changes, most of the things in the blog post would now error in many standard packages without someone explicitly defining interface trait functions to allow an object in that doesn't satisfy the interface which it's claiming to. Of course, not every person or every package has changed, but what I described here are major interface, style, and cultural changes to some of the most widely used packages since 2020.
Sukera|2 years ago
What interface checking? Base doesn't provide any such facilities. Package extensions are still ad-hoc constructions on a package by package basis; there is little to no consistency.
> Of course, not every person or every package has changed, but what I described here are major interface, style, and cultural changes to some of the most widely used packages since 2020.
And none of that has landed in Base, none of that is easy to find out about/discoverable for non-SciML users. SciML is not all of Julia, and certainly not Base or packages outside of SciML. Please don't frame this as if SciML was the only thing that mattered here.