Package extensions usage

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

On 30/12/15 02:25, Pascal Costanza wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 1) I believe package-local nicknames are very useful. Being able to 
> use abbreviations and avoiding conflict between nicknames from the use 
> site are just good ideas.
>
> 2) I don’t believe hierarchical package names are useful. That’s a 
> Javaism which just makes things too complicated (especially if they 
> then also are reflected by the directory hierarchy - beurk ;).
You're saying that because there are only 1279 systems in quicklisp so 
it's still manageable as a flat list.  But wait a little with tens or 
hundreds more systems and packages!

Probably, you've never worked with a big source base with a directory 
hierarchy didn't match the naming scheme.

> Also, I agree with Kenny that splitting libraries into too 
> fine-grained small little packages is not a good recipe for organizing 
> your projects. Lisp packages want to be big, and there is no major 
> disadvantage in doing so, and I fear that hierarchical package names 
> encourage unnecessary fine-grained splitting. That just creates 
> visibility problems, and distract from solving /actual/ problems.
Agreed.

> Basing package names on domain names provides the illusion that you 
> have unique names, but domain names come and go, companies change 
> owners, repositories move to different hosting servers, etc., etc., so 
> they are not as stable as one might think. If people use sufficiently 
> long package names that can then be renamed locally using 
> package-local nicknames, that’s sufficient, IMHO.

Oh, you're right. Now I see the light.  I will therefore rename my 
com.informatimago.* package into 2915BB3ECC3D45029DBF41BD48508E2E.*
And let's not talk about the 3 or 4 different CLON packages we have...

> My primary CL implementation is LispWorks, so I don’t use 
> package-local nicknames in practice, but I have used other languages 
> with similar features (most notably Oberon), and they were just very 
> handy.

-- 
__Pascal J. Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/