Re: procedure-source availability

[Daniel Hartwig <mandyke@gmail.com>]

On 3 October 2012 03:29, Panicz Maciej Godek <godek.maciek@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, the idea for now is that the associated .spec file containing
> the state of GUI is loaded on startup, and the state of the
> interpreter is dumped to that file on exit (or at GUI's request).
> Viewing the file will obviously be an option (for the curious user),
> but any modifications would probably be overwritten eventually (unless
> the file is write-protected).

You may be interested to see how Smalltalk handles this kind of thing.
 IIRC it dumps the complete VM state to disk and reloads.  Even
pre-packaged programs are simply VM dumps.  To deconstruct and then
reconstruct the running state of a system is quite a complex task.

Keep your own record of source information, etc. when your objects are
instantiated.  Associate this with each using object properties (or
similar construct).  This way you have any required environment and
precisely the source which generated the object, the user can inspect
this if interested and it can be used to create new instances.  As
someone mentioned earlier, the way macros are expanded there is no
single point to define (internal to guile) what is the “source” of a
procedure.  However, your system can define this as it has a clear
point of object instantiation.

I have not worked on such a system myself, so am poking around in the
dark here.  Good luck :-)