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Rule Request: ACL ordering within type contents

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rule-request
Dominant language
Swift
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Description

New Issue Checklist
New rule request

The rule is meant to have the most visible (public) fields or functions on the top of your class, struct or enum. So for example public var goes above internal var which in turn goes above private var. However public init would come below all of the var declarations, including the private vars. This could be an extension of type_contents_order where the contents are further sorted on access control, for example by adding an optional parameter to it.

This rule should be added to enforce consistency in an arbitrary way with as added bonus that the stuff you're most likely to interact with as consumer of the object / struct / enum is also the first you find when scrolling through the file. I have no strong opinion on this rule being mandatory or not, I think everybody's code would improve with better sorting of contents but type_contents_order is optional as well so it would be strange (and even impossible without type_contents_order?) to enforce this rule by default.

If you think this is a good idea, I can try to implement the rule myself.

One thing that can make it slightly difficult to implement is the fact that often fields don't have an explicit acces control modifier.

Would not trigger
class Car {
    public var horn = "Honk"
    internal var: owner: String
    private var tireType = "Whitewall"

    init(owner: String) {
        self.owner = owner
    }
    
    func replaceOwner(with newOwner: String) {
        owner = newOwner
        honk()
    }

    private func honk() {
        print(horn)
    }
}
Will trigger
class Car {
    internal var: owner: String // Public fields should precede internal fields
    private var tireType = "Whitewall" // Public fields should precede private fields
    public var horn = "Honk" // Public fields should precede private fields

    private init(owner: String, tireType: String) { // Public initializers should precede private initializers
        self.owner = owner
        self. tireType = tireType
    }

    init(owner: String) { // Public initializers should precede private initializers
        self.owner = owner
    }

    static func owned(by owner: String, having tireType: String) -> Car {
        return Car(owner: owner, tireType: String)
    }

    private func honk() { // Public functions should precede private functions
        print(horn)
    }
    
    func replaceOwner(with newOwner: String) { // Public functions should precede private functions
        owner = newOwner
        honk()
    }
}

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reading SwiftLint's existing type_contents_order rule and its linked documentation, then compare the requested access-control ordering with the provided examples. Define how implicit access modifiers and the optional configuration should behave; the work is done when the proposed rule consistently reports the demonstrated violations without reporting the non-triggering example.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
swift
Domain
tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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