Re: Adding stuff to the core distro (was Re: Infix syntax)

[Daniel Skarda]

Lynn Winebarger <address@hidden> writes:
>  Why can't I define a bunch of little modules (possible with dependencies)
> and then load those into srfi-1 which then exports all those names as one big 
> group?
> [ Or just load the subset I actually want/need ]

  AFAIK it is possible (see for example srfi-2 and re-export) but
unfortunately srfi-1 is not implemented this way :-(

  Short list of other module faux pas:

    - two list libraries - srfi-1 and ice-9/common-list. Both of them
      implement `every' etc.

      I guess module names like (list foo) would be very boring...

    - structs (guile-core), make-record (boot-9), define-struct (match,
      psyntax), define-record-type (srfi-9), define-class (goops).

>     The goal is not a small set of dependencies (per se).   It's just cleaner 
> to keep
> code from having more knowledge about other code than it should.  SE101.   I 
> think it's a little easier to enforce this minimalism of code knowledge if 
> you actually
> keep code in separate directories.  If anything, I'd probably advocate 
> separating
> what's in the libguile directory now into smaller, mostly independent 
> directories,
> where a developer could be reasonably certain that to understand a piece of
> code in a file they probably would only need to look at other files in that 
> subdirectory,
> or possibly in some header files (or possibly other subdirectories closer to 
> the real
> core code, i.e. eval.c).

  I understand. I do not oppose to separate code into directories. I just do
not understand why Guile _development_ is so separated - guile-core here,
guile-debugger over there etc.

  I do not propose to put everything into libguile or boot-9. I propose more
centralised development - distribute with guile everything somebody may find
useful (so he can directly start using guile for some specific task - no
need to search inet etc), develop everything together (lower maintenance
cost), make Guile more attractive.

SE (Scheme Elephant :-),
0.