[slime-devel] Re: :new-features command

[Brad Beveridge]

On 06/11/06, Helmut Eller <heller at common-lisp.net> wrote:
> * Brad Beveridge [2006-11-06 08:29+0100] writes:
>
> > SBCL's reader barfs on the symbol CFFI-FEATURES:DARWIN, because the
> > host side doesn't have have the package CFFI-FEATURES.  Which is fair
> > enough.
> > I'm guessing that the Emacs interpreter doesn't bother resolving the
> > symbols, so there is no problem.  Later on Slime prefixes ":" in front
> > of the non-keyword symbols, presumably to make them into keyword
> > symbols.
>
> I think, Slime only adds the ":" when it parses features expressions
> in source buffers, not for the message from the wire.
>
> > Am I understanding this correctly?
>
> Yes.  By convention, messages on the wire should only contain
> keywords, nil, and t.  But this convention isn't enforced, and the
> :new-features message obviously violates the convention.
That makes sense.

>
> > Is it possible to move the keyword
> > interning to the Swank side?  If so, I'll try to write a patch for
> > that.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean with "interning" here.  Instead of
> including the symbols in the message we could send a string
> [e.g. created with
>  (let ((*package* <keyword-package>)) (prin1-to-string <new-features>))].
I don't think I knew what I meant when I said "interning" :)
I think that for now I will hack on my Swank backend to return
:new-features as a string, later on I'll look at how that impacts
Slime and submit a patch.

Cheers
Brad