example/

Updating tools to support type parameters.

This guide is maintained by Rob Findley ([email protected]).

status: this document is currently a work-in-progress. See golang/go#50447 for more details.

1. Introduction
2. Summary of new language features and their APIs
3. Examples
   1. Generic types
   2. Constraint Interfaces
   3. Instantiation
4. Updating tools while building at older Go versions
5. Further help

Introduction

With Go 1.18, Go now supports generic programming via type parameters. This document is intended to serve as a guide for tool authors that want to update their tools to support the new language constructs introduced for generic Go.

This guide assumes some knowledge of the language changes to support generics. See the following references for more information:

• The original proposal for type parameters.
• The addendum for type sets.
• The latest language specfication (still in-progress as of 2021-01-11).
• The proposals for new APIs in go/token and go/ast, and in go/types.

It also assumes existing knowledge of go/ast and go/types. If you're just getting started, x/example/gotypes is a great introduction (and was the inspiration for this guide).

Summary of new language features and their APIs

While generic Go programming is a large change to the language, at a high level it introduces only a few new concepts. Specifically, we can break down our discussion into the following three broad categories. In each category, the relevant new APIs are listed (some constructors and getters/setters may be elided where they are trivial).

Generic types. Types and functions may be generic, meaning their declaration has a non-empty type parameter list: as in type List[T any] ... or func f[T1, T2 any]() { ... }. Type parameter lists define placeholder types (type parameters), scoped to the declaration, which may be substituted by any type satisfying their corresponding constraint interface to instantiate a new type or function.

Generic types may have methods, which declare receiver type parameters via their receiver type expression: func (r T[P1, ..., PN]) method(...) (...) {...}.

New APIs:

• The field ast.TypeSpec.TypeParams holds the type parameter list syntax for type declarations.
• The field ast.FuncType.TypeParams holds the type parameter list syntax for function declarations.
• The type types.TypeParam is a types.Type representing a type parameter. On this type, the Constraint and SetConstraint methods allow getting/setting the constraint, the Index method returns the index of the type parameter in the type parameter list that declares it, and the Obj method returns the object declared in the declaration scope for the type parameter (a types.TypeName).
• The type types.TypeParamList holds a list of type parameters.
• The method types.Named.TypeParams returns the type parameters for a type declaration.
• The method types.Named.SetTypeParams sets type parameters on a defined type.
• The function types.NewSignatureType creates a new (possibly generic) signature type.
• The method types.Signature.RecvTypeParams returns the receiver type parameters for a method.
• The method types.Signature.TypeParams returns the type parameters for a function.

Constraint Interfaces: type parameter constraints are interfaces, expressed via an interface type expression. Interfaces that are only used in constraint position are permitted new embedded elements composed of tilde expressions (~T) and unions (A | B | ~C). The new builtin interface type comparable is implemented by types for which == and != are valid. As a special case, the interface keyword may be omitted from constraint expressions if it may be implied (in which case we say the interface is implicit).

New APIs:

• The constant token.TILDE is used to represent tilde expressions as an ast.UnaryExpr.
• Union expressions are represented as an ast.BinaryExpr using |. This means that ast.BinaryExpr may now be both a type and value expression.
• The method types.Interface.IsImplicit reports whether the interface keyword was elided from this interface.
• The method types.Interface.MarkImplicit marks an interface as being implicit.
• The method types.Interface.IsComparable reports whether every type in an interface's type set is comparable.
• The method types.Interface.IsMethodSet reports whether an interface is defined entirely by its methods (has no specific types).
• The type types.Union is a type that represents an embedded union expression in an interface. May only appear as an embedded element in interfaces.
• The type types.Term represents a (possibly tilde) term of a union.

Instantiation: generic types and functions may be instantiated to create non-generic types and functions by providing type arguments (var x T[int]). Function type arguments may be inferred via function arguments, or via type parameter constraints.

New APIs:

• The type ast.IndexListExpr holds index expressions with multiple indices, as occurs in instantiation expressions with multiple type arguments, or in receivers with multiple type parameters.
• The function types.Instantiate instantiates a generic type with type arguments.
• The type types.Context is an opaque instantiation context that may be shared to reduce duplicate instances.
• The field types.Config.Context holds a shared Context to use for instantiation while type-checking.
• The type types.TypeList holds a list of types.
• The type types.ArgumentError holds an error associated with a specific argument index. Used to represent instantiation errors.
• The field types.Info.Instances maps instantiated identifiers to information about the resulting type instance.
• The type types.Instance holds information about a type or function instance.
• The method types.Named.TypeArgs reports the type arguments used to instantiate a named type.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate the new APIs above, and discuss their properties. All examples are runnable, contained in subdirectories of the directory holding this README.

Generic types

Type parameter lists

Suppose we want to understand the generic library below, which defines a generic Pair, a constraint interface Constraint, and a generic function MakePair.

package main

type Constraint interface {
	Value() interface{}
}

type Pair[L, R any] struct {
	left  L
	right R
}

func MakePair[L, R Constraint](l L, r R) Pair[L, R] {
	return Pair[L, R]{l, r}
}

We can use the new TypeParams fields in ast.TypeSpec and ast.FuncType to access the syntax of the type parameter list. From there, we can access type parameter types in at least three ways:

• by looking up type parameter definitions in types.Info
• by calling TypeParams() on types.Named or types.Signature
• by looking up type parameter objects in the declaration scope. Note that there now may be a scope associated with an ast.TypeSpec node.

func PrintTypeParams(fset *token.FileSet, file *ast.File) error {
	conf := types.Config{Importer: importer.Default()}
	info := &types.Info{
		Scopes: make(map[ast.Node]*types.Scope),
		Defs:   make(map[*ast.Ident]types.Object),
	}
	_, err := conf.Check("hello", fset, []*ast.File{file}, info)
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}

	// For convenience, we can use ast.Inspect to find the nodes we want to
	// investigate.
	ast.Inspect(file, func(n ast.Node) bool {
		var name *ast.Ident                  // the name of the generic object, or nil
		var tparamSyntax *ast.FieldList      // the list of type parameter fields
		var tparamTypes *types.TypeParamList // the list of type parameter types
		var scopeNode ast.Node               // the node associated with the declaration scope

		switch n := n.(type) {
		case *ast.TypeSpec:
			name = n.Name
			tparamSyntax = n.TypeParams
			tparamTypes = info.Defs[name].Type().(*types.Named).TypeParams()
			name = n.Name
			scopeNode = n
		case *ast.FuncDecl:
			name = n.Name
			tparamSyntax = n.Type.TypeParams
			tparamTypes = info.Defs[name].Type().(*types.Signature).TypeParams()
			scopeNode = n.Type
		}

		if name == nil {
			return true // not a generic object
		}

		// Option 1: find type parameters by looking at their declaring field list.
		if tparamSyntax != nil {
			fmt.Printf("%s has a type parameter field list with %d fields\n", name.Name, tparamSyntax.NumFields())
			for _, field := range tparamSyntax.List {
				for _, name := range field.Names {
					tparam := info.Defs[name]
					fmt.Printf("  field %s defines an object %q\n", name.Name, tparam)
				}
			}
		} else {
			fmt.Printf("%s does not have a type parameter list\n", name.Name)
		}

		// Option 2: find type parameters via the TypeParams() method on the
		// generic type.
		fmt.Printf("%s has %d type parameters:\n", name.Name, tparamTypes.Len())
		for i := 0; i < tparamTypes.Len(); i++ {
			tparam := tparamTypes.At(i)
			fmt.Printf("  %s has constraint %s\n", tparam, tparam.Constraint())
		}

		// Option 3: find type parameters by looking in the declaration scope.
		scope, ok := info.Scopes[scopeNode]
		if ok {
			fmt.Printf("%s has a scope with %d objects:\n", name.Name, scope.Len())
			for _, name := range scope.Names() {
				fmt.Printf("  %s is a %T\n", name, scope.Lookup(name))
			}
		} else {
			fmt.Printf("%s does not have a scope\n", name.Name)
		}

		return true
	})
	return nil
}

This program produces the following output. Note that not every type spec has a scope.

> go run golang.org/x/tools/internal/typeparams/example/findtypeparams
Constraint does not have a type parameter list
Constraint has 0 type parameters:
Constraint does not have a scope
Pair has a type parameter field list with 2 fields
  field L defines an object "type parameter L any"
  field R defines an object "type parameter R any"
Pair has 2 type parameters:
  L has constraint any
  R has constraint any
Pair has a scope with 2 objects:
  L is a *types.TypeName
  R is a *types.TypeName
MakePair has a type parameter field list with 2 fields
  field L defines an object "type parameter L hello.Constraint"
  field R defines an object "type parameter R hello.Constraint"
MakePair has 2 type parameters:
  L has constraint hello.Constraint
  R has constraint hello.Constraint
MakePair has a scope with 4 objects:
  L is a *types.TypeName
  R is a *types.TypeName
  l is a *types.Var
  r is a *types.Var

Methods on generic types

TODO

Constraint Interfaces

New interface elements

TODO

Implicit interfaces

TODO

Type sets

TODO

Instantiation

Finding instantiated types

TODO

Creating new instantiated types

TODO

Using a shared context

TODO

Updating tools while building at older Go versions

In the examples above, we can see how a lot of the new APIs integrate with existing usage of go/ast or go/types. However, most tools still need to build at older Go versions, and handling the new language constructs in-line will break builds at older Go versions.

For this purpose, the x/exp/typeparams package provides functions and types that proxy the new APIs (with stub implementations at older Go versions). NOTE: does not yet exist -- see golang/go#50447 for more information.

Further help

If you're working on updating a tool to support generics, and need help, please feel free to reach out for help in any of the following ways:

• Via the golang-tools mailing list.
• Directly to me via email ([email protected]).
• For bugs, you can file an issue.