Make packages independent of directory structure

[seannowotny]

Hello!

Currently a package is defined as a directory of Odin code files.

This makes it impossible to organize Odin files into folders for organizational purposes only.

I know that a lot of folks who program in Odin don't have a problem with this and exclusively navigate their code by symbol search.

However, I personally would much prefer it if I could organize Odin files into directories to my heart's content.
I'm not satisfied with being limited to navigate large code bases by symbol search only.

This is where I feel the programming language is making my life more difficult without good reason.
It's the only factor that's keeping me from using Odin over C++ for large projects.

I propose that packages be defined by the package declaration at the top of files e.g. package main, regardless of file location.

Afaik this change would not break backwards compatibility.

[gingerBill]

From the FAQ: https://odin-lang.org/docs/faq/#why-does-odin-not-have-any-extra-namespacing-feature-alongside-packages

In Odin, packages are designed to be treated as libraries, rather than mere organization. People have a massive tendency to taxonomize code more than absolutely necessary and as such, they will use any mechanism to do this, even if it does not benefit them or their team in the slightest. This “organization” aspect that many people ask for is virtually always a desire to taxonomize rather than organize–these are actually quite different in practice.

The problem is that if you have TWO different ways to do very similar things (packages and explicit namespaces), even if those things are categorically different, due to this aspect of human nature, people will tend to do the thing they are more acquainted with (e.g. files as namespaces, or explicit namespaces) rather than the preferred approach (packages as libraries).

If an extra “namespacing” construct was added to allow people to either “organize” code in another way, or add another layer of indirection for taxonomization, it murkies the concept of what a package is in the language.

If “taxonomization” is absolutely necessary, please prefer to prefix the identifiers of the declarations. Typing is not the bottleneck when programming, reading/scanning is.