Rename inject import to service

Summary

Currently, in order to use a service in any framework class you can do it like this:

import { inject } from '@ember/service';

export class MyComponent extends Component {
  @inject router;
}

However, it is very common to actually alias this import to service, like this:

import { inject as service } from '@ember/service';

export class MyComponent extends Component {
  @service router;
}

This RFC proposes to actually provide this as a service import directly.

Motivation

You cannot properly/easily use editor autocompletion to import @service.

Even in the guides, inject is aliased to service (see: https://guides.emberjs.com/release/services/#toc_accessing-services)

Finally, there is also an inject export from @ember/controller, which is also a possible source of confusion.

By exporting this directly as service, this would be streamlined:

import { service } from '@ember/service';

export class MyComponent extends Component {
  @service router;
}

Detailed design

We add an export service from the @ember/service package with the semantics of inject.

Import of inject itself will be deprecated targeting Ember 5.0 for removal, and the app blueprint will be updated as soon as possible to the new API.

Addons will likely want to support the legacy API for a long time, especially if the legacy API is not deprecated in Ember 4.0.0. The addon blueprint and best practice should be to:

import * as ES from '@ember/service';
const service = ES.service ?? ES.inject;

Then use service for injections.

How we teach this

The docs should be updated to directly import import { service } from '@ember/service';.

Drawbacks

It might be considered churn. However, we could probably provide a codemod to automatically rename the imports, lessening the churn.

Addons will need to live with a degraded injection API for a long time, if they want to support both versions.

Alternatives

We could leave the import as it is, continuing to suggest people rename the import to service.

Or we could stop suggesting the import and push for the community to simply use @inject myService.

We could also choose a different name for the import (e.g. injectService or something like this).

Unresolved questions