Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH][5] Make the "-module" option take the module name as an argument

[Peter Bex]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 03:46:38PM +1300, Evan Hanson wrote:
> On 2015-10-30  8:18, Evan Hanson wrote:
> > Yeah, I very nearly omitted the -main-module option, too. It's pretty
> > silly and I'd be happy to see it go.
> 
> Attached is a patch doing this. I've also pushed these commits to the
> "chicken-5-named-module-option" branch.

Thanks, I've merged this into chicken-5.

> On 2015-10-30  8:18, Evan Hanson wrote:
> > On 2015-10-29 20:06, Peter Bex wrote:
> > > This is a bit of a niche option, isn't it?  I don't really see the use
> > > of it: nothing gets exported anyway, so why should the name of the
> > > module matter?  Besides, wrapping something in a module isn't really
> > > that useful, except maybe to catch errors.
> > 
> > I'd also like to switch the default behaviour to export everything, but
> > haven't gotten to testing that out yet. That way it's still useful as a
> > "program wrapper" (since you won't be using those exports anyway), but
> > also useful when compiling many different files together.
> 
> OK, so I think there are two valid options here and I'm not sure which
> is better.
> 
>   1. Make the flag export everything as I suggested before. This works
>      fine, it's easy to understand, but it's slightly less flexible than
>      option 2:
> 
>   2. Keep the flag's behaviour as it is, exporting nothing, and let
>      users (export ...) any identifiers they want to be exported when
>      the file is compiled as a module. (This works well since export
>      forms occurring outside of a module are simply ignored.)
> 
> I think I'm partial to #2. That way, the flag still works as a program
> linter of sorts, but it's also generally useful as a way to control
> compilation in multi-file projects.
> 
> Thoughts?

I also prefer 2.  This also allows for inlining when you're only
using the option to wrap things in a module for linting purposes.
Besides, exporting absolutely everything is rarely a good idea anyway.

Cheers,
Peter

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