Provide lifting support for custom computation utilities/classes.

[asterkin]

Use Case

I'm developing a custom utilities class and want it to be equally accessible in inflight and preflight modes. For example,
pub enum DatetimeFormat {
ISO,
MMYYYY,
YYYYMMDD_HHMM
}

pub class Util {
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight toUtcString(date: std.Datetime): str;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight plus(date: std.Datetime, offset: duration): std.Datetime;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight minus(date: std.Datetime, offset: duration): std.Datetime;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight format(date: std.Datetime, format: DatetimeFormat): str;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight parse(date: str, format: DatetimeFormat): std.Datetime;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight formatMMYYYY(date: std.Datetime): str;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight parseMMYYYY(sd: str): std.Datetime;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight formatYYYYMMDD_HHMM(date: std.Datetime): str;
extern "./lib.js" static pub inflight parseYYYYMMDD_HHMM(sd: str): std.Datetime;
}
provides some additional computations for the std.Datetime class. All functions are defined as inflight which is their primary usage. However, I cannot use them in test setups since inflight functions cannot be called in the preflight context. This limitation leads to extra boilerplate code to be written.

Proposed Solution

1. I did not find anywhere in the documentation the convention of public inflight functions available directly from the library/module. Just found it in the Wing libraries code.
2. Make all inflight functions available in preflight (why not?), or provide a way to develop liftable classes, as it is done in the standard library. For example, I tried
   pub class Util impl std.ILiftable {
   ...
   }
   but it did not help.

Implementation Notes

The implementation already exists for Wing standard libraries. Just need to make it accessible for potential contributors.

Component

Compiler

Community Notes

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[Chriscbr]

Related: #435

[github-actions]

Hi,

This issue hasn't seen activity in 90 days. Therefore, we are marking this issue as stale for now. It will be closed after 7 days.
Feel free to re-open this issue when there's an update or relevant information to be added.
Thanks!