Idea: more intuitive crate name

[dherman]

When I was learning procedural macros, I found the name proc_macro2 not super illuminating and even a bit demoralizing: it gave me the feeling that there was a potentially unbounded number of concepts and not-necessarily-coordinated technologies I’d need to learn in order to get off the ground.

The purpose of this crate, if I’ve understood properly, is like what the web ecosystem calls a “polyfill”: a shim library that serves as a bridge to allow people to migrate to a new platform capability before that capability has become universally available.

Would it be worth considering, maybe for a future 0.x minor release (ie a pre-stable “Major” release), moving the crate to a new name like proc_macro_polyfill or proc_macro_shim?

I feel a name change could really help people compartmentalize the purpose of this crate as they’re learning procedural macros, which could really help prevent them falling off the on-ramp.

Thoughts?

[dherman]

(/cc @dtolnay who I mentioned this idea to on Discord)

[dherman]

Or replace underscores with - but otherwise same proposal :)

[alexcrichton]

Seems reasonable to me! The crate ended up surviving far longer than I originally thought it would, and I agree that the name is pretty bad given its intended purpose today!

We'll want to, as usual, coordinate with syn and quote for a breaking change, but this seems plausible to pick up when that happens.

[mystor]

@dtolnay Do we want to do this renaming before quote and syn hit 1.0?

[dtolnay]

Not necessarily -- we can make proc-macro2 reexport from the new name once one is picked, making them effectively aliases. Then quote and syn would be free to change their dependency to the new name in a nonbreaking release.

The future of proc_macro is still pretty unclear. In rust-lang/rust#57288 / rust-lang/rust@38c82a2 it seems that the types from proc_macro will end up as a submodule of a crate called meta which is wired up to require no extern crate (like std and core, unlike current proc_macro). With that in mind, a name like proc_macro_shim may not continue making sense indefinitely anyway.

I think it would be good to focus on progress around meta first, and roll that out simultaneously with whatever naming changes in proc-macro2 make them coherent together.

[mystor]

Interesting! I hadn't seen the discussion around the meta name. Given there's turmoil there, I think it's reasonable to leave this crate's name as-is for now.
Is there a discussion/RFC for what meta will look like? Mostly curious, but I might be able to help out.