On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 05:38:28PM +0100, Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:
>    From: Richard Todd <richardt@vzavenue.net>
>    Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 23:21:28 -0600
> 
>    Every time someone does this and contributes it to the
>    library, the entire guile community gets more efficient.
> 
> this is debatable.  a numerical recipe derived from slib (for example)
> has potential to suffer bit-rot when slib is enhanced.  i see that slib
> now has a module system of sorts; maybe you could codify the derivation
> methodology (steps to translate code from "slib module" format to "guile
> module" format) so that it could be applied to each slib release, to
> reduce your project's maintenance burden.

Yes, there will be maintenance to do when significant changes to the
source material appear.  I don't have a really good answer for that
problem, since anything but copying and (slightly) modifying their
sources conflics with the other goals I have for the project.

What I have done, is start a mapping between the project modules and
their SLIB sources.  I'm not sure, but if I re-sync with SLIB once a
year or so, that doesn't seem like too much of a maintenance headache.
I may feel differently the first time I actually have to *do* it!

For the stuff already written for guile that gets pulled in, I hope
the maintainers will either maintain their modules as part of the
standard lib, or actively help push their changes into the library at
their major updates.

This topic is definitely still up for debate.. I have pulled in some
SLIB sources as examples of what it would look like, but I have no
problem completely changing direction on that issue if guile users
think it would be best.

Richard Todd
richardt at vzavenue dot net