[racket-dev] [plt] Push #24906: master branch updated

[Hit Reply instead of Reply All, so fixing that here.]

On Jun 25, 2012, at 11:53 PM, Ryan Culpepper wrote:

> On 06/25/2012 09:27 PM, Stevie Strickland wrote:
>> On Jun 25, 2012, at 11:21 PM, Ryan Culpepper wrote:
>> 
>>> On 06/25/2012 09:04 PM, Asumu Takikawa wrote:
>>>> On 2012-06-25 20:17:33 -0600, Ryan Culpepper wrote:
>>>>> IIUC from your later message, you've implemented the generics
>>>>> analogue of object/c (per-instance contract), whereas
>>>>> prop:dict/contract is closer to class/c (per-type contract). It's a
>>>>> little fuzzy because prop:dict/contract hacks in per-instance
>>>>> contracts too in a kind of ad hoc way.
>>>> 
>>>> That's a good point. The better analogy might be interface contracts vs.
>>>> class/c. With generics, it is easy to control all points that an
>>>> instance is created since constructors are just procedures. With
>>>> classes, you can't get away with that since the instantiation forms are
>>>> macros.
>>>> 
>>>> The difference/advantage you might get with a per-type contract for
>>>> generics is that you get a more interface-like blame story, as with
>>>> interface contracts. Coverage isn't as much of an issue since you can
>>>> just contract all constructors.
>>>> 
>>>> Unfortunately, it's also not clear how to implement interface-like
>>>> contracts for generics. Since the generics forms don't control the
>>>> constructors, it's not obvious how to instantiate the blame at the
>>>> construction site.
>>> 
>>> You don't want to blame the construction site; the relevant party is the implementation site, where the generic interface is associated with concrete methods within a 'struct' form. See the docs for 'struct-type-property/c' for an example.
>> 
>> Well, there are two blame parties, right?
>> 
>> Much like interface contracts mediate between the creator of a class (that implements the interface) and the client of that class (that instantiates objects from that interface), I would think the contracts for a generic interface would be between the creator of a specific instance (the implementation site) and the user of that specific instance (the constructor site).
>> 
>> Stevie
> 
> The analogy to interface contracts doesn't help me, because I don't know anything about them. But I think I disagree.
> 
> (module GEN racket
>  ....
>  (define-generics has-prime
>    (get-a-prime has-prime))
>  (provide-generics-with-contract
>    (has-prime [get-a-prime (-> has-prime? prime?)])))
> 
> (module IMPL racket
>  ....
>  (struct prime-box (val)
>    #:methods gen:has-prime
>    [(define (get-a-prime self) (prime-box-val self))])
>  (provide (struct-out prime-box)))
> 
> (module CLIENT racket
>  ....
>  (define p (prime-box 4))
>  (get-a-prime p)) ;; ERROR
> 
> I think IMPL should be blamed for violating the contract on gen:has-prime.
> 
> As I see it, GEN establishes an obligation on implementors of 'has-prime'. IMPL provides an implementation that turns out to be faulty; it doesn't live up to the obligation imposed by GEN. CLIENT is blameless; I don't see how the location of the constructor call has anything to do with it.

I agree that IMPL is the positive blame party here and should be blamed for not returning a prime?, but that's because in this example it's not protecting itself from bad prime-box values.  It shouldn't suggest that it will, in fact, return prime numbers if it isn't protecting its constructor with a contract, or checking inside its implementation of get-a-prime that it is going to return a prime number without that constructor guarantee.

As for the negative blame, who should be responsible?  Who's responsible for the negative blame that gets triggered below, where we have a generic interface for containers mapping names to public keys?

(module GEN racket
....
(define-generics key-container
  ([get-key (-> key-container? (-> string? prime?))]))
(provide gen:key-container))

(module IMPL racket
....
(struct my-key-container (hash)
 #:methods gen:key-container
 [(define (get-key self) (lambda (str) (hash-ref my-key-container-hash str)))])
(provide (struct-out my-key-generator))

(module CLIENT racket
....
(define gen (my-key-generator (hash '(("foo" . 5)))))
(define key-lookup (get-key gen))
(key-lookup 'bad-key))

I'd say the person who created the generator (that is, the person who called the constructor, analogous to the object creator in the interface story).  If they wanted to pass off key-lookup to someone else without being blamed for bad  inputs, then they, of course, could just provide it with a contract.

So here's the issues I see with the blame story I'm considering:

* No way to contract the constructor (Asumu pointed this out with his desired parametric checks), which means no easy protection against having bad instances created.  This is what causes the implementation to be blamed in your situation, whereas just contracting the constructor would have avoided it.  It'd be nice to have a form that allows for this to be part of the generic definition, instead of just forcing the user to have to remember to write:

(provide/contract [prime-box (-> prime? has-prime?)])

but that likely requires changes to the struct form that uses the generic definition.

* What happens if you just call (get-a-prime 5) or (get-key 5)?  This seems to be a whole different blame story than someone who just creates a bad instance (like in your example), or who uses an instance badly (like in my example).  In a way, that might be akin to the following:

(define/contract (f x) (-> number? number?) x)
(f 3 5)

Instead of being a contract error, this is just a runtime error (partially due to implementation details, but even if you erase the contract, it's still a runtime error, so that's okay).  Similarly, (get-a-prime 5) would be a runtime error without the contracts, so I'm fine with it still being a runtime error with them, and only having contracts mediate interactions that involve actual instances of a generic structure.

Stevie