Re: Fmt Module

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Andreas Rottmann <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

[...]

>> I think it would make sense to include ‘fmt’ in core Guile only if the
>> API is reasonably stable and there are infrequent upstream releases, so
>> we don’t quickly end up shipping an old incompatible version.
>>
> I think `fmt' qualifies these criteria.

OK.

> However, even if I think based on your criteria nothing speaks against
> including fmt in Guile, there is still the argument of code duplication:
> if some external library (e.g., conjure) makes use of wak-fmt and
> another chooses the version included in Guile, a third program/library
> can't make use of both of these without ending up with two copies of the
> `fmt' code loaded, incurring a load-time and memory usage overhead.
> Obviously, there's also duplicated work involved in maintaining the
> different adaptions of the `fmt' code.  

I agree.

I think there’s a tension between the interest of Guile, which is to
provide a convenient way to access useful features, and the interests of
implementation-neutral “platforms” like Wak.  For instance I find it
important to have SXML, LALR, etc. usable out-of-the-box; it lowers the
barrier to entry.

Besides it’s still unclear (to me) what the future of Wak and similar
projects is.  I hope that it will take off, but I haven’t forgotten
Snow, ScmPkg, etc. either.

> I think the ideal solution

I think there’s no ideal solution, not yet.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.