Proposal for fixing PHP namespacing in Drupal 8

The lack of proper namespacing for PHP functions and classes is causing lots of problems for Drupal:

• A PHP library could redeclare a function or class that already exists in Drupal - causing PHP to abort.
• In a magic function / hook implementation there is ambiguity of where the module name ends and the hook name begins, e.g. views_comment_load() - is the hook 'comment_load' or 'load'?
• Modules can inadvertently implement a hook for some other module.
• Multiple modules can 'invent' the same hook, expecting it to do different things.

These problems can be fixed through a combination of 2 methods:

• Using PHP 5.3 namespaces: http://php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.php
• Redesigning the magic function / hook implementation naming system using __

See http://bluedroplet.com/blog/proposal-fixing-php-namespacing-drupal-8

Discussions about namespacing are ongoing, so the proposal may be different by Drupalcon.

Older discussions: http://drupal.org/node/867772 http://drupal.org/node/548470