[eurolisp] [ANN] Closer Project

[Pascal Costanza]

Here is an announcement of the Closer Project. This project is an 
umbrella project for a few subprojects whose aim is to improve the 
usability of the CLOS MOP across different Common Lisp implementations. 
The project website is at http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/


The first step (which already exists to a large degree) is a library 
that checks what features of the AMOP specification is supported by a 
given CL implementation. This results in a number of keywords that 
describe the various aspects of a MOP which can, for example, be used 
to conditionalize one's source code (when added to *features*). 
Currently, the following Common Lisp implementations are supported:

* Allegro Common Lisp, 6.2 Trial Version
* CLisp, 2.33.80
* CMU CL, experimental port to Mac OS X, 2004-01-28-020
* LispWorks 4.3 for Macintosh, Personal Edition
* OpenMCL 0.14.2-p1
* SBCL 0.8.18

...and some other implementation that I am not allowed to talk about.


The second step (which exists as a rough sketch) is a compatibility 
library that provides a package that adds missing features and/or 
replaces existing features with versions that better reflect the AMOP 
specs. If the latter is not possible, I try to provide utility 
functions that allow one to work around restrictions.


Finally, the Closer project should host a few example metaclasses, 
including some of the examples given in AMOP, and probably others as 
well. For example, my goal is to move some of the stuff from AspectL to 
the Closer project in order to turn this into a more coherent library. 
It is important to provide example applications of the MOP because they 
implicitly provide test cases against which new MOP implementations can 
be checked for compatibility.

So in the long run, the Closer project should help to bring the MOP 
into a shape that Common Lisp programmers can better rely on across 
many implementations.


Pascal

Disclaimer: This project is in a very early stage. Don't publish any 
findings about existing MOP implementations based on the software 
offered there with the implicit suggestion that they are facts. It is 
very likely that the code includes bugs and misinterpretations of the 
AMOP specification. You have been warned!