Trust issues

On IRC japhb told us that he needs a class to trust another class that can’t see the to be trusted class.

class B {…}

class A {
    trusts B;
}

class B {

}

This is nice and simple and allows B to call private methods on A. Sadly, that only works if A and B reside in the same file because a forward declaration will cause a compile time error, unless we define the declared type in the same compilation unit.

Method resolution is a runtime creature in Raku. By carefully looking at the code, we can learn where Rakudo stores what we need to cheat with.

class A {
    has $!a = 'private';
    method !a { $!a }
}

multi sub trait_mod:<is>(Mu:U \obj, :$spying!) {
    A.^add_trustee(obj);
}

class B is spying(A) {
    has A $.a = A.new;
    method m { say $!a!A::a }
}

B.new.m;

Luckily, the trait is operates quite early at compile time, so we don’t mess up method dispatch. I’m not feeling to bad poking with a trait where I should not peek. We can always move quickly into NQP-land and break things.

    method cheating {
        use nqp;
        say nqp::getattr($.a, A, 'a');
    }

As shown above, privacy is a matter of politeness. What leaves the question, if forcing a forward declaration to be resolved locally, to be a good design decision. I shall ponder to file a problem solving issue.