Rename ReferenceFlag to ReferenceFlags (plural)

[overlookmotel]

All the other semantic flags have plural names - ScopeFlags, SymbolFlags, NodeFlags. ReferenceFlag is the outlier.

Rename:

• ReferenceFlag to ReferenceFlags.
• Reference::flag field to flags.
• Reference::flag method to flags.
• Reference::flag_mut method to flags_mut.
• All vars called flag to flags.

Only reason I'm opening an issue for this rather than just submitting a PR is it'd cause merge conflicts with PR stack #4973, so will wait for that to get merged first.

[DonIsaac]

When you make this change, could you add a re-export of ReferenceFlags as ReferenceFlag and mark it as deprecated? This will give downstream consumers time to update their code.

[overlookmotel]

Good idea. How do I mark the export as deprecated? (not done that before)

Ditto for the Reference::flag + Reference::flag_mut methods?

[overlookmotel]

Actually, on 2nd thoughts, I'm not sure we should get into deprecation for such a simple change. Oxc is not at v1.0.0 yet, and we're making breaking changes all the time. This change is extremely minor compared to most of them, and if we leave an extra flag_mut method doubling the new flags_mut then we'll just have to remember to go and remove it later on (and discuss when it's safe to do that!).

What do you think?

[DonIsaac]

If it's not too much effort, deprecating for a single release could be worth it. It is definitely appreciated when upgrades do not break your code without warning :)

If you think we won't remember to clean it up, then adding a deprecation is not worth it. After all, like you said, it is a very small change.

[overlookmotel]

Personally, my view is that it's not worth it. I do understand that breaking changes are always painful, but we are nowhere near a stable API for Semantic, and this change is small beer. If we try to keep deprecated methods etc around for every change to Semantic over next few months I imagine it'll add up to a sizeable workload for us, and for fairly little benefit - people are still going to have to change their code at some point soon.

But also: If we also exported ReferenceFlags and ReferenceFlag, I'm not clear how do you mark ReferenceFlag as deprecated (in a way where people know it's deprecated). If there's no good way of doing that, the deprecation process would seem a bit pointless as no-one will notice the deprecation, and then they'll just experience it as a breaking change later on when we finally do remove the old name.