Re: [MIT-Scheme-devel] [commit fe044480] runtime: Make it nicer to (ge '(R3RS)).

[Taylor R Campbell]

   Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:56:03 -0700
   From: Matt Birkholz <address@hidden>

   > From: Taylor R Campbell <address@hidden>
   > Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 01:21:21 +0000
   > 
   > [...]
   > Ugh...  The behaviour of the parser and unparser should not depend
   > on whatever state the REPL user interface is in.  That leads to
   > nonsense like IMAIL's IMAP client breaking when you ask the REPL to
   > print numbers in hex.

   IMAIL formats numbers with WRITE?!

Yes.  This isn't a great idea, but it's expedient and wouldn't be
broken if the REPL's user interface configuration were separated from
the semantics of other random programs running in the image.

   > We need to eliminate this kind of thing, not add more of it.  Please
   > back out this change.

   Seriously?  I was boarding up a pit I fell into whilst exploring
   packages with (parent #f).  You were not supposed to be affected.  I
   did not change the behavior other than to retry before erroring.

I'm not objecting to falling back to a default if the environment
lookup fails.  I'm objecting to using the (USER) environment as a
default, or making reference to the (USER) environment at all outside
the user interface.  If you want to fall back to a default, fall back
to RUNTIME-PARSER-xyz.