Re: [Gcl-devel] gcl 2.7.0 hopelessly broken in debian

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Faré <address@hidden> writes:

| > Dear Camm,
| 
| >> Based on your feedback, I removed clc and tried again. Passed that
| >> point, I found a few more issues.
| >
| BTW, who's responsible for fixing the clc installation scripts for gcl?
| Could there be an easy bypass like the GCL_ANSI=t thingie?
| Could there be different executable names for different purposes?
| gclcltl1 gclansi gclclc, etc. - and gcl would be a symlink
| to one of the above.

I rather use a command line option than having 4 or 5 versions of GCL
executable, all essentially the same.

| Also, I don't understand why debian needs to have both gcl 2.6 and gcl 2.7.
| Is 2.6 still supported? Is there some important program that only works in
| 2.6 and not in 2.7?

GCL-2.6.x has been very stable for ages with most of its bugs and
workarounds well documented.  GCL-2.7.0 looks does not provides that
kind of stability yet.  As you have noticed, defpackage is one area
where things are murky.


| 
| >> 1- the fasl compiler tries to be clever with packages and apparently
| >> treats defpackage specially. To go around that issue, I specially
| >> defpackage trivial packages on gcl. I tried to write some complex
| >> macrolet that does the right thing on either gcl or other systems, but
| >> somehow it didn't make gcl happy.
| 
| > Are you referring to a reodering of defpackage statements?  Do you
| > have a sample source file showing this?
| >
| Here's a reduction of the bug. Try to compile a file that has this,
| then try to load it from a fresh lisp image:
| 
| (in-package :cl-user)
| (eval-when (:compile-toplevel :load-toplevel :execute)
|   (eval '(defpackage :foo (:use :cl))))
| (in-package :foo)
| (defvar *hello* 'world)
| 
| I suppose gcl, like ecl, does some magic optimization for interning symbols
| in fasls, with special treatment of defpackage. Problem being, when the
| defpackage only happens at execution time, the optimization is defeated
| and becomes a pessimization that breaks the fasl.

note that defpackage is atually a separate package in GCL, that
sometimes causes troubles if you don't use the package defpackage.