Re: minimalist guile

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Mildred <address@hidden> writes:

> Actually when I look all symbols defined by guile when a program
> starts, I found there is too much functions defined.
>
>> $ guile
>> guile>
>> Display all 1900 possibilities? (y or n)
>
> Isn't that too much ?

Yes it is (IMO).  Arguably, this may have a negative impact on startup
time (at least), plus it makes "sandboxing" harder (because by default,
you always get a whole lot of unwanted bindings).

However, I believe the main issue with spreading those functions over
several modules is compatibility: one cannot simply remove bindings that
have been available "by default" for years.

A solution to this might be to actually spread the functions into
several modules, and then have those modules autoloaded by the default
root module (thereby maintaining compatibility).  This might improve
startup time, and it would make code confinement easier because one
could start from the empty module and then selectively import bindings
from these new finer-grain modules.

Thanks,
Ludovic.