Interesting, thanks. Let me try to clarify my idea with some simple code:
// file lives at github.com/buchanae/foobar/foobar.go
package foobar
func Foobar() string {
return "foobar"
}
func main() {
print(Foobar())
}
This file exports both a function to be used as a library, and a main function
which would be compiled into a command line utility. In order to use the
library, you'd write `import "github.com/buchanae/foobar"; foobar.Foobar()`. In
order to use the command line tool, you'd run `go get
github.com/buchanae/foobar` and run `foobar` on the command line. There's no
`import "main"` or package named main in this example. The compiler would need
to look for a main function in the starting package and perhaps name symbols
using the fully qualified package name. Also, packages in the "foobar" tree
would not be importing the root, so there are no import cycles.
I'm not sure it's a good idea, but it was my instinct when I started writing
Go, and feels like it would have simplified the organization and documentation
of some projects which have a separate "go get <url>" for the library vs the
CLI command.
Hope that made sense. Probably too late to be writing about such things :)
On 10/24/17, 9:31 PM, "Ian Lance Taylor" <i...@golang.org> wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Alex Buchanan <buchanae.o...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is there documentation (or other) explaining why the main package must have
>> name "main" and may not be imported? Is this an important simplification for
>> the compiler?
>
>The language spec says that the main package must have the name main.
>I guess we could use other mechanisms but that one seems reasonable to
>me.
>
>cmd/compile prohibiting `import "main"` is a moderately important
>simplification because cmd/compile uses the import path to set symbol
>names, and for the main package it uses "main". If cmd/compile
>permitted `import "main"` then there would be two different packages
>with the same import path, which can't work. So it would have to use
>something else for the imported "main", but what?
>
>Note that cmd/compile does not prohibit importing a package named
>"main" if the path used to import that package is not specifically
>"main". But I think the go tool does prohibit that, and I think that
>is simply to be less surprising to most people.
>
>Ian
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