Re: [MIT-Scheme-devel] Module system?

[Matt Birkholz]

> From: Taylor R Campbell <address@hidden>
> Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:12:43 -0400
> 
>    Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:34:08 -0700
>    From: address@hidden (Matt Birkholz)
> 
>    [...]
>    You must have a lot of big problems that you want the module system to
>    solve.  What are these "actual" dependencies?  Build dependencies?
> 
> ;;; foo.scm
> [...]
>
> What went wrong?

You did not follow the common practice of providing an initialization
procedure, like this:

        (define foo)

        (define (initialize-package)
          (set! foo (+ bar 1)))

And you used (load-package-set "test") but did not put your package
descriptions in load order.

> Why shouldn't a module system allow you to express this information,
> and use it?

Apparently it just lacks a user manual.

>    I don't want to solve any BIG problems.  I just want to be able to
>    fasload a reference to a variable in a named environment.
> 
>    I guess my work will NOT relate to any serious module system effort. ;-)
> 
> Whenever I hear about non-serious efforts I become afraid that they
> will grow and accrue and thereby inhibit serious module system
> efforts.

I think they have medication for that now. :-)

Seriously, I should not be labeling efforts as "serious" or not.  I am
sure Lisps' many defsystems were all "serious", and your own desires
heartfelt.  I meant only that I did not see a concrete spec., nor even
a consensus, on the horizon.  Our home page lead me to believe
otherwise.

I also meant that I do not see build process automation as impacting
my "reification" of syntactic closures.

If build process automation gets you hot, you must be familiar with
the examples of edwin.sf, compiler.sf, etc.  Do they not argue that
staging and re-building are tricksy and full-blown Scheme is
appropriate?

I could use more procedures like sf-conditionally, or the
sf-with-dependencies in edwin/decls.scm -- not another defsystem.