[closer-devel] Adding dynamic-wind to ContextL

[Pascal Costanza]

On 13 Nov 2009, at 10:09, Tobias C. Rittweiler wrote:

> Pascal Costanza <pc at p-cos.net> writes:
> 
>> + Do you mean "Can I provide dynamic-wind as a separate library,
>> + without adding all that layered stuff in the same library as well?"
>> + I think I potentially could, but I'm hesitating to do so. Library
>> + granularity is a problematic thing: If you make your libraries too
>> + small, you create lots of dependencies that people somehow have to
>> + manage (including the maintainers of the library, but also users of
>> + the library). If you create them too large, users load a lot of code
>> + into their application that they ultimately don't need.
>> 
>> I have already got complaints in the past that I had too many
>> dependencies (that's why I removed the lw-compat from Closer to MOP
>> library, for example). So: Is it really worthwhile to separate out
>> dynamic-wind? Does it hurt so much to load the rest of ContextL even
>> if you don't need it?
> 
> I can relate to that. I'd be fine if the dynamic-wind stuff came in its
> own defsystem, but is distributed with ContextL. It's like the "use the
> most specific function" rule of thumb.

Is that common practice in other CL libraries?

Do I understand the idea right? I set up the same package and export the same symbols as before, but only implement a subset of them, by loading only a subset of the implementation files, and I do this by defining a system that only specifies that subset of the implementation files. Is that correct?

How many other libraries use that approach? If that's really common, I'm willing to give it a try...

> http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/downloads.html still says that
> lw-compat is required.

Yes, because the 'official' distribution still requires this. This will change hopefully soon...


Best,
Pascal

-- 
Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc at p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Software Languages Lab
Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium