Re: [Chicken-users] Proposed procedure movement in Chicken 4

[Peter Bex]

On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 10:51:35AM -0700, Kon Lovett wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> These are planned changes to the unit structure of Chicken 4:
> 
> 1) Unit utils 'read-all' -> Unit extras.
> 
> 2) Unit utils 'qs', 'system*', 'compile-file-options', & 'compile- 
> file' -> Unit files.
> 
> 3) Unit extras random stuff -> Unit utils
> 
> 4) Unit files pathname stuff -> Unit pathname
> 
> 5) Unit extras -> Unit io
> 
> 6) Unit data-structures functionals+combinators -> combinators
> 
> I want to perform 1 - 3 soon, and 4 - 6 after. Comments?

It seems a bit gratuitous, especially the creation of new units like
"pathname", "io" and "combinators".  That will break a _lot_ of code.
I am afraid we will get the same situation we had a while back when
"unit files" was first created; lots of eggs breaking and confusion
all around.  How can we ensure eggs keep working on systems with
Chicken 4.1 and Chicken 4.2 (assuming these will be made into 4.2)?
We can only distinguish between major versions of Chicken in
chicken-setup and other egg tools.

I don't really understand the rationale between splitting up stuff
even more, while Felix proposed to join more stuff together.

Also, what's the difference between unit extras and unit utils?
They both sound like "miscellaneous stuff" to me.  If we are changing
things around so radically, we should take the opportunity and get rid
of one of those.

Cheers,
Peter
-- 
http://sjamaan.ath.cx
--
"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer
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                                                        -- Donald Knuth

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