While I agree that embedding of a yet another web-server into installation of some enterprise software is really a very, very bad idea, increasing a vector of attack, and in the scenario of tightened enterprise install it should be avoided at all costs. But, OTOH, I understand the position of developers using full kit of IRIS (not community edition) for those this immediate Apache removal might lead to significant user experience regression. And it would be rather more preferable to "deprecate" it somehow smoother (e.g. change default to not install, but still keep it as part of a kit for developers installations).

But all this sounds like you actually need to have 3 kinds of kits available:

- community with PWS enabled by default;

- developer version, with all theoretical insecurities, but with convenient goodies integrated (i.e. Apache available, may be with vscode+extensions, and so on);

- and tightened, production ready kit, with Apache kit removed.

The shorter, not very much serious answer - #dim is recommended by COS Guidelines we used in our local community - COS Guidelines

[But well, whom am I tricking about - these rules written by myself, and it was my personal push to use this practice here]

Here is the longer question: I hate dynamic typing systems, they tend to break sooner, and they frequently complicate understanding for your team mates. #dim constructs was a small set forward in making COS less dynamic typed, and more static typed language. Originally it was created as a hint for Studio auto-complete, but we always understood that it could be reused for some sort of static analyser (if it would ever be created) which will help find some COS errors rather sooner, at the compile time (or around of compilation time). But these has never materialized  (at least it has not happened till last time I checked a couple of years ago). 

So, if we could not check something automatically, via analysers, we could enforce it manually via policy written to guidelines, and obligatory peer-review before commits...

Let me be crystal clear and honest - this is horrible

[I thought so more than 2 years ago when Max originally published this approach in Russian and still think so today]

When you write some code you write it not for yourself, not for being modern and trendy, you write it "for another guy" which will visit it tomorrow. You need to write it as simple as possible, using most obvious approach.

If you could write something using same or similar amount of code but without tricky macros then you have to write it simpler and without macros (as here) or without tricky iterators (as in Max case). This complexity just not worth a time your team will loss debugging such code.

Please, do  not get me wrong - I love JavaScript/TypeScript and all modern things. And would love to apply as expressive constructs as closures in JavaScript or lambdas in C++ (hmm). But they are not here (yet) in the ObjectScript. Many of us tried to lobby for closures addition for ages, but gods of COS had no interest in them.

Though, in my personal opinion, implemention of handy closure support would not be much harder than dotted DO statement (and might be based on the same VM token implementation). But I might be wrong in estimation of complexity. 

Threading is a god send in very populated forums. You could used to flat discussions if there are no many participants, but once more people got involved, and more topics got added to the fule, the harder to navigate in a flat thread. 

Threading might be not that deep (i.e. a couple of "em" to the right), but in either form they better to keep threading.

[Lack of threading is driving me crazy in all modern messengers with groups enabled, like Slack, Skype, Telegram. Have you ever tried to not get lost in very popular chat room in Telegram or Slack once there are more than 500 members joined?]

Indeed, but I'm reluctant to remove it, at leats now, but rather use as a good corner case of system version dependency. We should declare it as Caché 2014-2015 only, (or rather declaratively  <=2015.*).

Certainly, as original author, you have full rights to unpublish it, if you want to. But please wait till we resolve all authorization issues (or make it using GitHub SSO).

P.S.

Have I already mentioned it yet, that the lowest Caché version which I want to have CPM working is 2014.1? (where CSP.REST support introduced). Soe there are 2 major versions (2014 and 2015) where this component makes a lot of sense.

And these 2 silly projects named 'tsafin~*' were put to the list just for this particular reason: I need to have a few components in the registry over which I have direct control, and where I could put such versioning information in the format expected by CPM

P.S.

At the times when I was one of admins in both "intersystems" and "intersystems-ru" GitHub repositories I could just go and commit the correct version support. :) But right now I could not be so rude anymore, and need to play by rules, be gentlemen and ask for a favor.

[Ok, that was a joke - I've never intended to be so much rude]

Well, you remember, this is still "curated" list? So any kbit of information I put to repository have been verified (created) by me. Originally, version information is coming from GitHub metadata for a given project. If this project did have releases (like webterminal) then version is there and I use it inside, if there were no releases, then I put default version number 0.0.1 (npm is rejecting packages without version triplet).

After a moment community would start to use "package.json inside of class xdata" trick, since then we would have version information as precise as author wanted (and XData information will override release matadata values, so it will be author responsibility to keep them updated).

We could try to use automatically generated XData package definitions for each imported github repo, but they will work only if they have been committed to the original source repository. So it still needs some cooperation with author.

P.S.

It wil be much, much easier, if eventually Cache (somehoow) would get native package.json (or generic *.json, or *.yml) support in the class compiler...

Well, this is interesting aspect we did discuss internally. But from practical point of view (intending to create working system the simplest way possible) it was easier for us to start from the system where modern ObjectScript and rich classes library were available. It's just thousands times easier than without them.

Let see how far we could get with ObjectScript part of story, we should first get some developer attention, fill repository, grow audience...

P.S.

And there is no need to name it CMPM if there would be some MUMPS, because the first "C" means "Community" today :)

[Did you see that nice animation I've inserted to the CPM cover page? That was done for a reason]