Remove `parent` as 1st mandatory argument for patch

Having parent as first argument works very well when the all app is designed and wrote with picodom but not that much when used in a mixed libs app. (yes it happens in real world)

You cannot then just render / create a component to get its main node and then append it manually to a parent node of your choice at the time you choose.

To get around this you have to create a fake parent with document.createElement but that add a useless layer.

I’m also not a big fan of that kind of dependency injection and lake of separation which introduce a dependence between the child and its parent, I do prefer the other way, parent knowing its children, but I think this is just a matter of taste.

[estrattonbailey]

I’ve abandoned my original plans since proposing #91, but I’ve stayed subscribed to this thread because I find it interesting, lol.

On that note, my goal there was twofold:

1. Create a “meaningful” mount function
2. Create a simpler patch function (which would satisfy the original problem this issue was opened to address)

As you can see in here, patch accepts two VDOM nodes, and uses internal _ref props that associate mounted nodes to their DOM node counterparts to find parent, children, and nextSibling references.

JorgeBucaran expressed some concern with mutating the node structure with private fields. I don’t share that concern, but I am probably inexperienced in this area so I defer.

The same pattern could definitely be achieved using @mindplay-dk’s proposal of an internal map. I had considered this when I was poking around #91, but was concerned about reliably creating unique indices to associate VDOM nodes to DOM nodes in the map, as well as the additional lookup and memory allocation. Attaching it to the VDOM node via _ref seemed like a more stable and compact solution.

At any rate, my 2¢ is that there should be a separate mount function that initializes a VDOM tree. Then there should be a patch function solely for patching said VDOM tree.

It’s been fun to see this discussion unfold 😃

[mindplay-dk]

I’ve said that before, but my personal goal is to have something that is simple and useful - I’m only counting bytes to get an idea of whether it’s still small, the impact of making a change, and so on. 1K or 2K is besides the point for me 😃