[slime-devel] Re: three little patches

[Gary King]

> I would occasionally benefit from patch in cases when browsing a file
> whose code is in a package as-of-yet-unloaded, and meta-pointing to a
> symbol in COMMON-LISP, but that's about all:

I work with the code loaded too but I often work with lots of  
packages and so am often not in the package that some symbol I want  
to see is defined. For example, I'm working on function foo and I  
know that function bar is related to its implementation but bar isn't  
exported. Right now, I can't type bar and meta-point. I must either  
navigate to the file in which bar resides myself or type package::bar  
and meta-point. All the patch does is save me from having to type /  
remember the package before meta-pointing.

> If your patch (I haven't actually tried it, so...) affects arglist
> lookup it would be a misfeature for me: whenever Slime fails to give
> me the arglist I expect I know something is wrong.

The patch doesn't alter arglist. It only alters meta-point. A better  
patch (better in my opinion <smile>) would also alter the behavior of  
symbol-completion so that I could type "bar meta-tab" and have Lisp  
find package::bar for me.

> How about for a more conservative version: if the symbol isn't found
> in the current package, prompt user for an alternative package,
> defaulting to CL-USER?

For my use case, this would be no better than the current behavior of  
slime... milage may vary, etc.

thanks for the comments,
-- 
Gary Warren King
metabang.com
http://www.metabang.com/