[armedbear-devel] Fwd: Is anybody interested in jfli-abcl?

[Anton Vodonosov]

28.05.2012, 17:08, "Alessio Stalla" <alessiostalla at gmail.com>:

>  On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Anton Vodonosov <avodonosov at yandex.ru> wrote:
>>   28.05.2012, 16:22, "Anton Vodonosov" <avodonosov at yandex.ru>:
>>>   If independent version of new-class is not ready, probably it's possible to
>>>   deliver runtime-class a a contrib [...]
>>   I've checked the ABCL sources and see that runtime-class.lisp is now
>>   included into ABCL. So we don't even need to create a contrib for it.
>>
>>   Could anyone help me understand the problem with new-class, why removing
>>   it? Namely, when the asm.jar will be needed,
>>
>>   What I understand now:
>>
>>   1. abcl-jfli function jrc calls java:jnew-runtime-class.
>>   2. java:jnew-runtime-class needs asm.jar.
>  2. is wrong. jnew-runtime-class used to require asm, was disabled, and
>  was reintroduced (incomplete) without a dependency to asm and with a
>  slightly different API. In other words, jrc right now is probably
>  broken.
>
>  To restore jrc right now, you'd need to restore runtime-class.lisp
>  from version control, and bundle it in contrib under a different
>  package (assuming it still works with present-day asm).

Ah I see, it's different runtime-class. Thanks for the explanation.

>  That would be possible, but I object that having 2 different APIs for
>  the same thing is a potential source for confusion.

Yes, but it's also the way of software evolution: we use some API,
notice it's deficiencies, deprecate it and introduce new, better
API. Let me note that it could have been called runtime-class2
to avoid confusion and compatibility issues.

Probably now, if packaging the old runtime-class as a contrib, we will
need to rename it to old-runtime-class, or even deprecated-runtime-class.

Could you explain about the asm.jar dependency in case of the
deprecated-runtime-class? Would it be a load-time dependency,
or a call-time dependency?

Best regards,
- Anton