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Re: Modified load-path proposal
From: |
Ludovic Courtès |
Subject: |
Re: Modified load-path proposal |
Date: |
Tue, 13 Dec 2005 09:38:19 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.110004 (No Gnus v0.4) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) |
Hi Neil,
Sorry for the delay in answering your proposal.
Neil Jerram <address@hidden> writes:
> I think this rules out any kind of iteration through a .d directory
> from init.scm. Apologies for not seeing this consideration before.
Agreed. Guile already takes almost two seconds to start up on my
500 MHz G4...
> -- Scheme Procedure: initialize-packages . package-names
> Load the startup file for each of the packages in PACKAGE-NAMES.
> The startup file for a given package is only loaded once per
> Guile run, so `initialize-packages' avoids loading a package's
> startup file again if it has already been loaded.
> If one of the named packages doesn't have a startup file,
> `initialize-packages' calls `package-startup-file-not-found'
> with the package name as the only argument. By default
> `package-startup-file-not-found' prints a warning to standard
> output, but you can `set!' it to something else if that is
> more appropriate for your application.
>
> The idea would be for both Guile applications and Guile modules to use
> this. A Guile application should know which packages it uses
> (directly), and so can include an appropriate `initialize-packages'
> call in its startup script. Similarly a Guile module knows which
> packages it uses, and so can call `initialize-packages' before trying
> to use any modules from that package.
>
> (In practice this would mean before the define-module form, but I
> don't see anything wrong with that. For example:
>
> (initialize-packages "guile-gtk")
>
> (define-module (ossau widgets)
> #:use-module (gtk gtk)
> ...)
>
> )
Hmm, I don't like it a lot, I find it way too intrusive. And this may
also have a slight impact on startup time.
Maybe we could instead go for an ad hoc solution. For instance, have
Guile provide a `guile-setup' program which could be used as follows:
$ guile-setup add-load-path "/usr/chbouib/guile/"
$ guile-setup remove-load-path "/usr/local/share/guile/smurf"
In practice, this would modify a single (text) file, say,
`$data/load-paths.cfg'. This very file would be loaded when Guile is
started, modifying `%load-path' accordingly. Autoconf macros would make
sure that `guile-setup add-load-path' is called upon installation of a
Guile package.
For efficiency reason, this file should be text-only (e.g., one load
path per line), or it could be more Scheme-friendly (e.g., a sequence of
RnRS strings which may be read by `read'). It should not require any
call to `eval'.
What do you think?
This is certainly not perfect but I think we must strive (i) to keep
things simple and (ii) to avoid wasting more cycles.
Thanks,
Ludovic.