`package` vs `package object`

[Nikita Volkov]

What practical difference does it make from a user's perspective to declare a member in the package object or on the package level? 

The only difference I know about is that `package` does not allow declaration of functions and `package object` allows anything, but warns you not to declare classes in it. But why should the user be even bothered by such a distinction, and moreover what does a newcomer have to learn of such a concept as `package object` for, when it can be easily eliminated by simply enabling all its functionality on the package level?

The way I see it, `package object` is a supposed to be internal compiler-level abstraction that somehow crawled out into the actual language API. Therefore I want to open a debate on deprecating it and allowing declaration of any member in the `package { }` block or on the package level.

[Chris Hodapp]

One problem is that the contents of a package can be distributed across a large number of files (some may even be compiled at a later time than others), but the contents of the package object have to be defined in a single object, ensuring that there is only one place for the compiler to look for package-scoped methods and values. This makes implementing this "let you define methods and values in the package" feature a lot harder to implement than just having the compiler automatically group methods and values defined in the package scope into a hidden object.

[Som Snytt]

Also "things to come" may introduce semantics:
http://www.scala-lang.org/docu/files/packageobjects/packageobjects_3.html

[HamsterofDeath]

because stuff in a package object is automatically imported in every
class of that package. put some implicits in your root package object
and you'll effectively pimp scala for all your classes