bug#49452: Confusing behavior with (include) used in file in GUILE_LOAD_PATH

[Vijay Marupudi]

Thank you Taylan. This does appear to be the same bug. This bug can be
closed as a duplicate. Looks like Andy Wingo suggested a potential fix,
but there was no follow-up. If someone is willing to show me the ropes
when I need them, I can take a stab at learning the Guile codebase and
fixing the bug.

Vijay

On 7/7/21 3:29 AM, Taylan Kammer wrote:
> On 07.07.2021 02:31, Vijay Marupudi wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> It is unclear to me what the intended behavior for (include
>> "filename.scm") is, so I'm sending an email about this potential bug.
>>
>> The Local Inclusion docs
>> <https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Local-Inclusion.html>
>> seem to state that relative paths are found relative to the file that
>> included them.
>>
>>> If file-name is a relative path, it is searched for relative to the
>>> path that contains the file that the include form appears in.
>>
>> So if I have a file "/libraries/libname/main.scm" than has (include
>> "./helpers.scm"), then the file "/libraries/libname/helpers.scm"
>> *should* (I think) be imported.
>>
>> But this does not seem to work if "/libraries" is in the GUILE_LOAD_PATH
>> and my current working directory is somewhere else, say "/home/user" and
>> I'm running "/home/user/program.scm" that imports the (libname main)
>> library from "/libraries". Then Guile seems to try to include the
>> "libname/helpers.scm" file from the current directory, which does not
>> exist.
>>
>> Conversations with leoprikler in IRC have revealed to me that
>> call-with-include-port is the function responsible for this behavior
>> <https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guile.git/tree/module/ice-9/psyntax.scm#n3231>.
>> `syntax-source` returns a file path relative to the load path, and
>> include tries to use that path to open a file relative to the current
>> working directory.
>>
>> In Guile's bug guidelines
>> <https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/docs-2.2/guile-ref/Reporting-Bugs.html>,
>> to me this fits
>>
>> * Whenever documentation and actual behavior differ, you have certainly
>>   found a bug, either in the documentation or in the program.
>>
>> and potentially
>>
>> * When some part of the documentation is not clear and does not make
>>   sense to you even after re-reading the section, it is a bug.
>>
>> I believe this is a bug, but I may be wrong, so emailing to clarify.
>> Thank you!
>>
>> Vijay Marupudi
>> PhD Student in Human Centered-Computing
>> Georgia Institute of Technology
> 
> Hi Vijay,
> 
> I believe this is the same bug as this one I reported 5-6 years ago:
> 
> https://bugs.gnu.org/21613
> 
> Sadly there was no progress on it as far as I know.
>