Project

General

Profile

Misc #21143

Updated by fxn (Xavier Noria) 5 days ago

The hooks `const_added` and `inherited` may need to be executed "together". 

 For example, consider: 

 ```ruby 
 module M 
   def self.const_added(cname) = ... 

   class C 
     def self.inherited(subclass) = ... 
   end 

   class D < C; end 
 end 
 ``` 

 When `D` is defined, two hooks are set to run, but in which order? 

 Both orders make sense in a way: 

 1. When `inherited` is called, you can observe that the subclass has a permanent name, ergo it was assigned to a constant, which must me stored in a class or module object. module. Therefore, the constant was added to said module module before `inherited` was invoked. 

 
 1. When `const_added` is called, you can `const_get` the symbol and observe the object is a class, hence with a superclass, hence inheritance already happened. 

 The patch in [ruby#12759](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/12759) https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/12759 documents and adds a test for (1). Rationale: 

 1. I believe it would be nice to specify this order. 

 
 1. Chose (1) because it is how it works today. 

 While the motivation for the patch was formal (to remove an ambiguity), after reflecting about this I realized users of Zeitwerk may depend on this. Nowadays, Zeitwerk uses `const_added` to set autoloads for child constants in namespaces. Thanks to the current order, code can be used in `inherited` hooks normally (it would not be ready if the order was different). 

Back