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Re: [O] problems with export and :cache
From: |
Nicolas Goaziou |
Subject: |
Re: [O] problems with export and :cache |
Date: |
Sun, 01 Nov 2015 23:56:49 +0100 |
Hello,
Aaron Ecay <address@hidden> writes:
> If this means “can it ever work?” then I think the answer is “yes it
> can”. But I think the current implementation is broken and likely to
> remain so for the foreseeable future. The issues are:
>
> 1. :cache only works for code which is a pure function of its header args
> 2. When combined with :session, the environment that the code is evaluated
> in is not created anew each time it is run. This makes it much easier
> to leak references to (e.g.) variables defined in other blocks
> 3. The proper notion of purity is not easily defined when the code does
> things like modifying the emacs environment, touching the filesystem,
> or accessing the language’s RNG.
> 4. We (org devs) don’t actually understand how the semantics of cache
> interacts with other babel features. See:
> <http://mid.gmane.org/address@hidden>.
>
> 1-3 are likely to be extremely confusing for users, especially less
> technically sophisticated ones (what’s a “pure function” anyway)? The
> inability to give a clear introductory explanation of the feature in
> combination with 4 indicating we don’t actually understand it ourselves
> makes me feel like we should not be advertising, let alone recommending,
> it.
>
> The only other literate programming environment that I know of that
> implements such a feature is knitr (for R). They address these issues
> by providing (optional) free-variable analysis to construct a dependency
> graph between code blocks. There is also some handling of RNG seed
> values. The documentation <http://yihui.name/knitr/demo/cache/> is much
> more comprehensive, including a prominent statement about the dangers of
> side effect-ful code and a nuanced discussion of several issues,
> including the RNG.
Thank you for the explanations.
Assuming the user knows what s?he is doing (so I'm not bothered by
issues 2 and 3), :cache is still a somewhat useful feature. I don't mind
advertising it. Though, I agree we could include big fat warnings about
it in the manual.
Also, :cache might be a bit misleading as it implies more than what this
feature offer, i.e., a dumb "don't update results if contents didn't
change". I cannot think of a better name, tho.
Regards,
--
Nicolas Goaziou
- Re: [O] problems with export and :cache,
Nicolas Goaziou <=