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Re: My Guile Wishlist


From: rm
Subject: Re: My Guile Wishlist
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 14:18:01 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.3.24i

On Tue, Mar 19, 2002 at 08:14:45PM +0000, Neil Jerram wrote:
>  ...
> Take, for example, the module system, obarrays and so on (vcells,
> variables, builtin bindings ...).
> 
> On the one hand, these related areas have been dramatically simplified
> since 1.4, in pursuit of the goal that there should be one simple,
> easy to understand way of doing things.
> 
> On the other hand, this has left us with a problem as regards
> documenting what's changed clearly enough for people using the old C
> interface.

Thanks, this expresses very well my recent feelings about the upcoming
changes. Even so i'm lurking on guile-user as well as guile-developer
it sometimes took me hours (if not days :-) to adapt existing (C-) code
to the CVS guile. I can well imagine that application developers that
spent more time on their apps and less on the guile mailing lists will
cry out in horror when confronted with these rather dramatic changes.
As a test case, try porting SCWM (currently in stable Debian) to the new
guile ...
A few observations:

 - many changes are just "cosmetic". Renames of typedefs/functions etc.
   can be softened by the use of a comaptibility header that gets included
   in all files. [1] [2] 

 - Given the neccesary information most changes are rather trivial. The 
   sometimes frustrating part is the 'compile-and-see-what-disapeared'
   cycles. Maybe some authomatic code scanner could help here. I started
   to use 'rats' (http://www.securesw.com/rats/)  for this task, unfortu-
   nately i currently don't have enough time nore insight to create  the 
   full database of changes (rats uses a xml based database file that 
   optionaly can include tips and background information. I'm pretty shure 
   that such a database could be maintained as an online resurce. Thinking
   of it: i could probably provide the online space and set up a web interface
   if someone wants to help with the actual content).


 Ralf Mattes
[1] It would be helpfull to include suggestions on how to replace deprecated
    defines/functions into the NEWS or ChangeLog files.
[2] It's rather irritating if newly introduced functions use deprecated
    symbols (file NEWS, line 981: 
    ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)

> In other words, we have to start from where we are, and the biggest
> brake on us trying to reach One Good Way To Do Things is the need to
> provide backwards compatibility and to explain changes, and the
> limitations of the tools we have available to help us do that.
> 
>         Neil
> 
> 
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