[Snow-users-list] Suggestion and seeking advice

Marc Feeley feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Mon Mar 12 00:18:36 EDT 2007


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On 11-Mar-07, at 11:17 AM, Dominique Boucher wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
>
> Over the past few months, I have developed a number of Scheme  
> libraries, but they were written mainly (if not exclusively) for  
> Gambit-C. I think Snow would be a nice way of packaging those  
> libraries, by I don’t intend to port them myself to all the  
> numerous Scheme implementations. On the other hand, it would be  
> great if they could be ported to other systems.
>
>
>
> So my question is this : what is the best process to handle this  
> situation? Provide the package as is and wait for contributions?
Yes.  I would like the Snow repository to be a space where packages  
can be exchanged between Scheme users, whether they are for a single  
Scheme system or multiple Scheme systems.  Uploading a package that  
works on only one Scheme system is fine because it may entice those  
interested in the package to port it to other host Scheme systems.   
It would be counter productive to require that package be totally  
portable from the start.  Portability is the end-goal, not the  
initial requirement.
> And my suggestion: would it be interesting to specify on which  
> Scheme systems a package can run directly in the snow package  
> specification?
I believe this information should not be in the package itself,  
because it is a complex piece of information that may become stale  
quickly (i.e. it depends on the version of the Scheme system, the  
configuration options, the compilation mode, the Snow implementation,  
etc).  A package's compatibility with a given Scheme system may  
change when a new version of that Scheme system becomes available,  
and after the author has lost interest (or the free time) to change  
the package compatibility meta-data in the package.  It is better for  
the compatibility information to be contributed by the users of the  
package.  They can report which combination of Scheme system,  
version, compilation options, Snow implementation, etc are required.

Marc

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