Anubis

Can we have a little more explanations about this enhancement, please?

How should it works? What is the benefit compaired to a form like :

define [[ChildType]]:
  child_type(ParentType).

If you write:

type ChildType:
child_type(ParentType).

what you get is a 'clone' of ParentType which is distinct from ParentType. On the contrary an alias is just another name for the same type.

Of course, this is an important distinction since the compiler determines one and only one type for each term.

Alright, but what are the benefits ?

In my mind, a great enhancement can be performances, but only if a clone can't be used in place of the original (in other words, they are different types with same definition).

Example. With the form

define [[ChildType]]:
  child_type(ParentType).

The optimization is another problem (not yet solved). I spoke only about semantics. The 'feature' of aliases is that we may use a simple short name instead of a complicated schema applied to several types which may themselves be schemas applied to etc... This is just for comfort, readability, and maybe also a conceptual enhancement. This is still to be discussed. Anyway, aliases are not implemented yet.