Re: Trouble with `export'.

[Marius Vollmer]

Dirk Herrmann <address@hidden> writes:

> [...] It seems that the 'import all' paradigm itself is broken.

But it's soo convenient.  Imagine using (gtk gtk) for a largish GUI
and having to state 200 or so gtk functions that you are using,
although they all start with `gtk-'.  People would hate us for this
I'm sure.

> You would never run into problems if you had to state explicitly
> where each binding should come from.  Or, more exactly, you still
> could run into conflicts, but all these conflicts should be
> detectable and not happen silently.

I think this is the key property: conflicts should be detected and
either resolved with simple and obvious rules or signalled as an
error.  What is simple and obvious is of course open to
interpretation, and modules might even select their own set of rules.
I'd say that "local definitions take precedence over imported ones" is
simple and obvious, but "for two imported definitions, the one that
has been imported earlier takes precedence, where `earlier' means..."
is not simple or obvious.  Well, I have committed the export/re-export
distinction already and even made `export' backward compatible
temporarily, spiting out a deprecation warning.