On Sat, 2002-08-10 at 11:33, Matt Kaufmann wrote:
Thanks. Will COMMON-LISP and LISP ultimately be the same package? That is,
will this form return true?
(eq (find-package "LISP") (find-package "COMMON-LISP"))
No, this should never be so. As gcl moves toward ansi common lisp, the
symbols in LISP should be moved to COMMON-LISP. Anything left over
(i.e., in gcl's LISP but not part of the 978 symbols of ansi
COMMON-LISP) should be moved into a compatibility package. The package
LISP should go away since it is a confusing remnant of the days when the
language was specified by the CLtL book.
Which leads to a proposal: sometime soon, perhaps just after 2.5.0 is
released, we branch the cvs, with the branch being 2.5.x maintenance
(with the goal of a clean, multi-platform build of maxima and maybe
acl2) and a development branch headed for ansi compliance. The
development branch is allowed to break backward compatibility with 2.5.x
and earlier.
The development branch could still support special features or
compatibility modes but it would not be a _requirement_.
What do people think?
Best Wishes,
Greg