Dmitry Stogov has published the patch on PHP-internals implementing the simple namespace model for PHP that I co-authored. I urge everybody to please take a look and discuss it – best on the internals list since the audience is bigger, but comments here are welcome too.
The main idea of the proposal is to attack one target and this target only – the Super_Long_Really_Annoying_Enormous_Class_Names that lately became the bane of big project developer. All other things are considered secondary to this goal – no attempt to make some different include model, packaging model, etc. This approach, in my opinion, allows to greatly simplify the concept and the mechanics involved. It allows to reduce most of the work to simple text transformation, without any need to create complex hierarchies with obscure rules.
Of course, there are some edge cases still, but we aim to make frequently used cases easy and converting existing code to this model easier, while accepting that some edge cases might be uncomfortable. I am also sure that there are scenarios of which we did not think – and you are welcome to point those out.
One thing I feel might be missing from the current patch is the runtime resolution of namespaced names – currently if you use variable (new $classname) it has to contain the full name, possibly with use of __NAMESPACE__ constant containing current namespace name. I am not sure if we need runtime – it adds some convenience, but requires the engine to do much more work.
