[gambit-list] Re: ANN: Common-Scheme 0.3
Neil Jerram
neil at ossau.uklinux.net
Mon Sep 12 15:24:10 EDT 2005
Alex Shinn <alexshinn at gmail.com> writes:
> Thanks for your comments. Which part do you think should be a SRFI?
The module system. (As it happens, looking around today I discovered
Andre van Tonder's module system spec, which looks (to my superficial
eyes) quite similar to yours, and which is formatted as though it is
about to be submitted as a SRFI. So it may be that a SRFI module
system will soon be in the pipeline anyway.)
> There are 3 aspects to Common-Scheme.
>
> The first is the module system. There are in fact people who know
> much more than I do about module systems working on this. Some
> day it will be submitted as a SRFI. After intense flame wars, discussion
> will trail off, and in maybe 6 to 12 months the SRFI will be finalized.
> Following a period of time after that various implementations may or
> may not adopt the new system, with or without compatibilty for their
> existing module systems.
>
> In the meantime you can actually use Common-Scheme right now
> with a wide variety of implementations. Worse case scenario is 2
> years down the line you make a small change to the headers of
> your code.
You summarize both sides of the argument very well. I know the flame
wars are a pain, but I also know from Guile discussions how tricky
module systems are, so I suspect they're worth enduring.
To be honest, though, your comment above has made me realize that I'm
not yet your target audience. For the next year my plans are
Guile-specific, so I can wait for the SRFI. common-module probably
does meet the needs of people who can't wait until then, and it will
probably also provide a useful starting point for when it comes to
implementing an agreed module SRFI in various Scheme implementations.
> The third aspect is the peer-to-peer network (which if you've browser
> only has three modules at the moment, I'm in the process of converting
> more). An important thing to remember about the Scheme community
> is its fragmented nature. To embrace, rather than fight, this nature,
> Common-Schemes module system is decentralized peer-to-peet, and
> the core of the system itself is all public domain, so no one's in charge,
> and people are more free to do their own thing and still share their
> experiments than in any other package management system out there.
This aspect sounds very cool; I need to look more at it.
Regards,
Neil
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