Re: [Gcl-devel] Package operation in a bad place?

[Raymond Toy]

>>>>> "Camm" == Camm Maguire <address@hidden> writes:

    Camm> Greetings!
    Camm> This is due to a long-standing design bug in the .data format appended
    Camm> to the .o file and used to initialize lisp objects on loading compiled
    Camm> binaries. 

    Camm> Referenced lisp symbols are written with out with package prefixes, 
and

"with out with"?  You mean without?

    Camm> stored in a vector, which is unreadable unless the packages exist at
    Camm> that time.  GCL makes a crude attempt at detecting 'package 
operations'

Isn't ok to throw an error if the package doesn't exist?  In any case,
if (in-package "FOO") works, doesn't that mean the package must
already exist?  I guess maybe there's a problem if you're creating the
package in the same file, but that seems like a very easy workaround:
create the package  before using, in a separate file if necessary.  I
think that's considered good practice.

    Camm> and moving these to the head of the file, which of course is dangerous
    Camm> and triggers the warning.  

Maxima does this in quite a few places.  It seems to work. Perhaps
we're just lucky?

--
Ray