Re: vm merged to master

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

Heya Ludo,

On Sat 14 Mar 2009 15:36, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

>> `(procedure-property apply 'arity)' needs some work
>
> Right, that won't work if `apply' is a program.  The question is: what
> should we do with procedure properties?

You jump questions ;)

 1) Procedure properties do work on programs. They just aren't
    serialized to disk. But some serializations set properties on the
    resulting procedure -- e.g. define*.

 2) Programs do have properties -- program-properties, i think the
    accessor is.

 3) Should arity be accessed via procedure-properties? I think not.
    Logically properties are cached values, not computed values, whereas
    arity can be computed.

 3.5) Should arity even be represented like that? The recent addition to
    (ice-9 session), procedure-arguments, is another take on that
    question.

 4) For some reason I like numbered lists recently? Please take it as
    some way of organizing my thoughts, it's not intended to be pedantic
    ;)

> Before the VM, [procedure-properties] could be used both with subrs
> and Scheme closures.

They still can.

>   - the `object-ref' limitation to 256 objects;

We spoke of this on IRC, for those that weren't there. Actually, for
those that don't know: #guile is a friendly place. We actually have a
night shift going during the week, if you drop in between 21h and 24h
CET, people are likely hacking away :-)

>   - `current-reader' not taken into account;

I want to fix this soon.

>   - circular references among modules (previously worked around via
>     autoloads) not supported---but this is a good thing, it's an
>     opportunity to remove kludges.  :-)

Is this really the case? Can you make a test case?

> I'll eventually proceed with the merge in the BDW-GC branches.

Great, I'm looking forward to that :-))

Cheers,

Andy
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