Re: The GH interface. (was: Patch for gh.h)

[Dirk Herrmann]

Keisuke Nishida <address@hidden> writes:
> What about renaming all public scm_ interface to gh_ and others to gl_?

On 8 May 2001, Rob Browning wrote:
>   foo.h -- public header containing the publically visible function.
>   foo_p.h -- private header containing functions that other .c files need.
>   foo.c -- foo source.
> 
> Then foo_p.h will include foo.h, and foo.c will include foo_p.h, and
> the _p.h headers don't get installed in /usr/include.  An alternate
> similar strategies would be to use a include/priv directory, but I
> don't particularly like that one during development because it makes
> accessing the foo.h foo_p.h pair harder from your editor.

IMO, the best solution is the one that was proposed by Neil Jerram in
this same thread:

> - invent a macro SCM_INTERNAL, and use it in libguile header files to
>   mark everything not considered portable, stable and appropriate for
>   external use (then Guile would #define SCM_INTERNAL, but
>   applications should normally not do so)

No additional files, no weird renaming.  Making a definition internal is
quite easy and just requires to put it between #ifdef SCM_INTERNAL #endif
pairs.  However, we also have the convention, that internal definitions
should use a scm_i_ or SCM_I_ prefix, but not many definitions follow this
rule yet.  A combination of both ideas (i. e. using SCM_INTERNAL
plus the scm_i_ / SCM_I_ prefix) seems nice.

The main part of the work, however, is to decide which definitions belong
to the public part and which are internal ones.

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann