The biggest feature I want out of Starlark the language (not Bazel the build system) is to allow optional type annotations. They don’t have to do anything, they don’t have to specified, it just needs to be syntactically valid to put type annotations somewhere. If there were syntax for type annotations that tools like Bazel ignored, it would be possible for some enterprising soul who’s forced to use Bazel at work to throw up an initial prototype of a type checker and a language server for Starlark in Bazel. The language is not that complicated that a type checker couldn’t be written by a hobbiest.
My biggest frustration when using Bazel is not even Bazel—it’s the fact that when I’m looking at code like this[1], everything comes from a single, unannotated `rctx` variable that has no type annotation. So when I’m trying to read the code, it’s a matter of constantly grepping the repo, grepping the bazel docs, and grepping the bazel source code to get any new code written.
Why can’t I just hover and see the docs? Why can’t I press `rctx.` and see all the attributes available?
I frequently hear “why do you need types? the language is Turing complete just run it and see if it fails” but that misses the point that I have want to use types to guide what code to write in the first place.
[1] https://github.com/bazel-contrib/toolchains_llvm/blob/master...
My biggest frustration when using Bazel is not even Bazel—it’s the fact that when I’m looking at code like this[1], everything comes from a single, unannotated `rctx` variable that has no type annotation. So when I’m trying to read the code, it’s a matter of constantly grepping the repo, grepping the bazel docs, and grepping the bazel source code to get any new code written.
Why can’t I just hover and see the docs? Why can’t I press `rctx.` and see all the attributes available?
I frequently hear “why do you need types? the language is Turing complete just run it and see if it fails” but that misses the point that I have want to use types to guide what code to write in the first place.
[1] https://github.com/bazel-contrib/toolchains_llvm/blob/master...