From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Mark H Weaver Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: Adding to the end of the load path Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:16 -0500 Message-ID: <87fw4atrjz.fsf@tines.lan> References: <87sj8o20v0.fsf@googlemail.com> <87liecucrz.fsf@delenn.home.rotty.xx.vu> <87k3tpkyeg.fsf@gnu.org> <87a9uied25.fsf@delenn.home.rotty.xx.vu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1353019490 20416 80.91.229.3 (15 Nov 2012 22:44:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 22:44:50 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= , guile-devel@gnu.org To: Andreas Rottmann Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Nov 15 23:45:00 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1TZ8B9-00040R-T1 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:45:00 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34510 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TZ8B0-00045j-4b for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:50 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:45542) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TZ8Av-00045S-5P for guile-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:48 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TZ8As-0003Wi-2v for guile-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:45 -0500 Original-Received: from world.peace.net ([96.39.62.75]:40638) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1TZ8Ar-0003We-Uy; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:42 -0500 Original-Received: from turntable.mit.edu ([18.160.0.29] helo=tines.lan) by world.peace.net with esmtpsa (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1TZ8Ak-0000jy-9J; Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:44:34 -0500 In-Reply-To: <87a9uied25.fsf@delenn.home.rotty.xx.vu> (Andreas Rottmann's message of "Thu, 15 Nov 2012 23:06:26 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.2 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 96.39.62.75 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:15175 Archived-At: Hi Andreas, Andreas Rottmann writes: > ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Court=C3=A8s) writes: > >> I pretty much like Mark=E2=80=99s suggestion of using =E2=80=98...=E2=80= =99 as a special marker, >> even though that=E2=80=99s a valid file name. >> > Well, there's a workaround -- specifying "./..." as an "escape sequence" > for "..." if you really need to have a three-dot relative directory in > the path. > >> How would that work for you? >> > I would like the approach using separate _SUFFIX variables better, as it > doesn't have this special case. As I wrote earlier, I certainly agree that the _SUFFIX approach is cleaner. Unfortunately, we need a solution that will work nicely with earlier versions of Guile. > While I don't think the special case > will be a problem for a user setting the environment variables > themselves, if you want to set them programatically, you now have to > consider treat "..." specially, escaping it like mentioned above, to be > general. Note that PATH-style variables are already not general, because they provide no way to include filenames containing ':' (a colon). In general, it's best to avoid setting GUILE_LOAD_PATH programmatically, because it will affect more than just the instance of Guile you intended; it will also affect any subprocesses that use Guile. It's better to use -L which is fully general without any special cases, or to modify %load-path within the program itself. > However, I can live with that, but maybe we can have it both > ways: > > - Add the _SUFFIX environment variables, making it clear in the docs > that they are supported only from Guile 2.0.7 onward. Yes, I agree this is a good idea. > - Additonally, add "..." as a special marker, but mention it is just > provided to support Guile < 2.0.7, and should not be used in code that > needs to depend on Guile 2.0.7 or newer for other reasons > (e.g. reliance on another added feature or significant bugfix). Again, these environment variables are not specific to any particular piece of code. They are usually associated with an entire user account. > I'm not sure how the deprecation strategy is employed exactly, but we > could mark the "..." feature as deprecated right away, or at least in > master, and remove it in 2.2 or 2.4. I don't think we can mark it deprecated until versions of Guile older than 2.0.7 have become very rare, which won't be until at least 2017 (due to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS), and then it will need to be deprecated for a couple more years before we can get rid of it entirely. Therefore, I think it's premature to emphasize the transient nature of the "..." marker. Like it or not, we'll probably be stuck with it for 7 or 8 years. Does that make sense? Regards, Mark