Re: [Bug-apl] Bug: GNU APL does not call start_input after a )LOAD

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hi Elias,

I see. So when would you like to load the shared lib? We could do it by )COMMAND or by a --command-line-option.
Sounds like you want it rather early, even before APL's immediate execution loop starts. That would be a
--command-line-option then. We could keep the rest (function names in libraries etc.) and just separate the
native function object. There would still be a native function object as such, but you don't see it in APL and you
can't delete it either. Of course you also can't call it from APL then.

/// Jürgen


On 05/10/2014 05:47 PM, Elias Mårtenson wrote:

First of all, sorry about the benchmark numbers. I thought I already sent them but I see now that I had forgotten about it. I'll do it tomorrow.

About the libraries, I see what you are saying. Having a library ID is definitely one way of dealing with this (I suppose the package manager can be used to pull it in if it's missing on the system).

However, the Emacs mode is different. A non-emacs user would not want to (and shouldn't) have the library loaded. Likewise, if I load a dump from someone who is not using Emacs, I don't want to lose the Emacs mode that I already loaded.

I think that the Emacs mode native library and others, such as the SQL one, are fundamentally different in the sense that the former attaches to the runtime session and never interacts with the programs the user writes, while the other is a "normal" library used by a specific program that only differs from a normal APL program by the language the library is written in.

The library ID system is definitely a good thing for the latter type of native library.

However, I believe a separate model is needed for the former type. In fact, the Emacs mode library doesn't even need a function entry point. I can imagine other libraries of the same type, though none as obvious as the editor integration stuff.

The former type need to load, stay in a single session, and never interact with the user in any visible way. This includes being included in a dump file. Even seeing the native entry point in the output of )FNS can be confusing, and I would really like to be able to avoid that one.

Regards,

Elias