sharing types between profiles

During this week’s TOSCA Language Ad-Hoc meeting, we discussed at length the need for allowing type definitions to be shared between different versions of profiles. Tal kept us honest by reminding us we need to focus on the basic problems we’re trying to solve. We kept coming back to substitution mapping as the primary use case, since we may need to match node types defined in different profiles. This led us to consider solutions that are specific to substitution mapping.

However, I remain convinced that substitution mapping is only one of a dozen or so use cases where type sharing may be required. In fact, I would argue that this feature may be necessary for all TOSCA features that identify types by name. To illustrate my point, I’m attaching a document that illustrates the problem in the context of the new derivation rules we’ve been discussing. I hope the text in the document is sufficiently clear, but please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Chris

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