Re: Help sought understanding shorthands wrt modules/packages

[Gerd Möllmann]

> I wonder if a consensus could be reached here.  Namely, just omit :use
> from any Emacs implementation of lisp packages.
>
> I would like to hear more from people with more Common Lisp experience
> than I do, but importing all symbols from one package into another does
> not strike me as an essential feature, or a good idea in general.  

Use-package (which is what :use is using in defpackage :-) is kind of a 
natural thing, for me.  For example, this use is ubiquitous and might 
even be in the standard, I don't remember:

(in-package "CL-USER")
(use-package "COMMON-LISP")

which basically says "let me use all of CL without qualification" in my 
interactive session.  So, you don't have to write cl:car, you write car.

And that's the spirit in which I've seen use-package is used in general:
You are writing a package doing X11 stuff - you might (or might not) use
package xlib.  You don't like cl:loop, you might want to use the iterate
package.  You're in a compiler package, you might want to use the API of
the assembler package.  And so on.

I think one important part to also keep in mind is that packages allow
internal and external symbols.  The external symbols are the API.  The
internals one can access (with X::Y), if you need to, but you should
feel guilty :-).  The evolution of APIs is of course another can of worms.