macros are not namespaced

[exodustx0]

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org $0000
norom

macro Foo()
	print "foo"
	db $00
endmacro

namespace Private
	Random: db $01
	macro Bar()
		print "bar"
		db $02
	endmacro
namespace off

%Foo()
dw Private_Random
%Private_Bar()

Output:

test.asm:19 (called from test.asm:19): error: (Emacro_not_found): Macro 'Private_Bar' wasn't found. [%Private_Bar()]
foo
Errors were detected while assembling the patch. Assembling aborted. Your ROM has not been modified.

(Only tested with Asar 1.91.)

[RPGHacker]

Currently, namespaces as a feature exist for labels only. Macros or defines are unaffected by them. So in the example above, the macro's global name is still just "Bar".

Would be useful to support, I guess, though I'm also 60% sure adding macros and defines to namespaces retroactively would break a lot of existing patches... 🤔

[exodustx0]

Ah, that wasn't obvious to me from the manual. Still, it seems intuitive to me to assume that any identifier would support namespacing, not just some subset of them, so I do support... supporting it. But indeed, backwards-compatibility seems... troublesome. Dare I suggest adding a keyword setting for it? Or maybe this is something that can be put in Asar 2 and included in migration notes or something to that effect.

[RPGHacker]

For what its worth, programming languages that implement macros via a preprocessor (like C++) also have this limitation. They also aren't namespaced there. Though Asar doesn't do that, and I agree namespaced macros (and defines and functions, for that matter) would be a good idea. For that matter, I'd also prefer if Asar didn't use underscore to qualify namespaces, but that's a different topic.

If we changed this, we could do what Asar 1.9 is doing and first have a release or two that only deprecates the feature, followed by a release that outright removes it.