ECS with Go - circular imports [migrated]

Posted by Andreas on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Andreas
Published on 2014-06-09T18:01:25Z Indexed on 2014/06/09 21:42 UTC
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I'm exploring both Go and Entity-Component-Systems. I understand how ECS works, and I'm trying to replicate what seems to be the go-to document of ECS, namely http://cowboyprogramming.com/2007/01/05/evolve-your-heirachy/

For performance, the document recommends to use static arrays of every component type. That is, not arrays of component interfaces (arrays of pointers). The problem with this in Go is circular imports.

I have one package, ecs, which contains the definitions for Entity, Component and System types/interfaces as well as an EntityManager. Another package, ecs/components, contains the various components. Obviously, the ecs/components package depends on ecs. But, to declare arrays of specific components in EntityManager, ecs would depend on ecs/components, therefore creating a circular import.

Is there any way of avoiding this? I am aware that normally a high level system should not depend on lower systems. I'm also want to point out that using an array of pointers is probably fast enough for my purposes, but I'm interested in possible workarounds (for future reference)

Thank you for your help!

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