Best formalism to define the interface

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
julia
Domain
api, backend-api-design

Research direction

Start by reviewing the proposed interface choices in this issue and the referenced Graphs.jl pull request #262. Compare the methodless-function and default-error approaches, along with the linked Interfaces.jl and InterfaceSpecs.jl options. Done means the maintainers agree on and document the formalism for the new API.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

question

When we define the new API, there will be abstract types with some methods that must be implemented. In base Julia, I see two main ways of specifying this (as in, defining the function name, possibly with a generic docstring):

julia> function myfunc1 end
myfunc1 (generic function with 0 methods)

julia> myfunc2(args...) = error("Not implemented")
myfunc2 (generic function with 1 method)

julia> myfunc1(1)
ERROR: MethodError: no method matching myfunc1(::Int64)
Stacktrace:
 [1] top-level scope
   @ REPL[4]:1

julia> myfunc2(1)
ERROR: Not implemented
Stacktrace:
 [1] error(s::String)
   @ Base ./error.jl:35
 [2] myfunc2(args::Int64)
   @ Main ./REPL[2]:1
 [3] top-level scope
   @ REPL[5]:1

I believe a methodless function is better than a single method throwing an error by default. The end result is nearly the same in terms of user experience, but I find the first error clearer because it directly tells you what to implement. @simonschoelly what do you think?

Of course we could also consider more advanced options like Interfaces.jl or InterfaceSpecs.jl but maybe it's a bit overkill?

See also: https://github.com/JuliaGraphs/Graphs.jl/pull/262

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