Re: Modified load-path proposal

[Neil Jerram]

Greg Troxel <address@hidden> writes:

> before deciding about tags and descriptions, I think we need to be
> clearer on the semantics of these directories and why they'd be
> used. [...]

Greg, I'm sorry but I don't want to comment in detail on everything
you've said.  In my view what you have described is mostly policy,
whereas I'm interested right now in the mechanism.

That said, mechanism and policy are obviously dependent in at least 3
ways.

1. There has to be a set of defaults, which is policy.

2. Likely policies can help us decide what mechanism will be useful.

3. Policy examples are useful for documenting the mechanism.

So, to summarize how what I think you are saying relates to these
points ...

1. Regardless of possibly more rational arguments (e.g. what on earth
   is "site" for?), I think the defaults have to be back-compatible.
   That means they have to be ("${prefix}/share/guile/site"
   "${prefix}/share/guile/1.6" "${prefix}/share/guile").

2. I think your arguments about how parallel distributions may be
   installed are strong enough to dismiss the cross-product idea.

   I don't see any benefit of GUILE_SCHEME_DIR taking an own-prefix
   argument; in this case the package author can just hardcode
   own-prefix in their Makefile.am.

   I'd like to leave the decision to the distributor on exactly where
   installation under Guile's prefix should go - whether guile,
   guile/site or guile/1.6.  I think I'd make the default guile/site,
   but I'm not much bothered.

3. I shall keep your email around for when it comes to documenting all
   this - thanks!

Regards,
        Neil