ES Modules: suggestions for improvement

[David Herman]

On Jun 27, 2012, at 10:58 AM, Kevin Smith wrote:

> The client chose to use *. You don't have to use * if you don't want to. It's a convenience.
> 
> The convenience of * comes with a price, of course:  (a) the inability to statically catch undeclared names without also anlayzing external files, (b) the hazard of name collisions, and (c) the inability for a reader to tell where names are coming from without automated analysis.

We intend to rule out (b) by disallowing import * from shadowing. But yes, the convenience does mean that the bindings are not explicitly named. That's the trade-off. I prefer to leave this trade-off to developers. Others prefer to make a unilateral ban on *. Reasonable people can disagree. But in my calculus, that argues for inclusion in the language and letting developers or teams make the decision for themselves whether to use it.

> Is it worth it?  How can we tell?

By implementing it in SpiderMonkey! :) Seriously, though, we intend to build modules so people can get a feel for it.

I understand that import * is controversial. ES6 modules don't depend inherently on them. I believe that they're an important convenience for scripting. But they're not fundamental.

Dave

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