Re: Handling modules with same name (from library and from current project)

[Nala Ginrut <nalaginrut@gmail.com>]

> How do you
avoid these module name conflicts? How do you make sure that only libraries
themselves use their own helper function modules?

If I understand you correctly.
I think you should add a namespace as directory inside lib dir, pick your
own unique project name as the namespace, say mylib, and define it as
(define-module (mylib list-utils))

Best regards.

Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de> 于 2025年1月5日周日 下午11:50写道：

> Hello Guile Users!
>
> I have a question regarding an issue I run into again and again, and have
> not
> found an adequate solution for yet. I want to know how you are handling
> this,
> what your solution is.
>
> (1) recent story:
>
> I have a website, that I wrote manually in pure HTML and CSS. It does what
> it
> should and there is no actual issue with it. However, I have been thinking
> it
> would be cool to implement it in Guile and make a sort of minimal example
> or web
> "framework", of how one can make such a static website using Guile. I
> already
> have some example in my examples repository. However, that example has
> code in
> it, that is copied from my existing "guile-fslib", which is on guix
> already. So
> I have been thinking: "I should just install the package from guix and
> remove
> this code from my new website repository, having it hidden away in the
> guile-fslib library." It is just some code to work with file names and
> directories and paths, not directly web related, but important for
> checking,
> whether a request for a static resource/an asset is within the "static"
> directory, and not just anywhere on the server, which would be a security
> issue.
>
> Of course I could put everything in a docker container or something, or
> completely serve static assets using a HTTP server, as one should, but
> then the
> Guile thing I want to build would not work on its own. I want to at least
> have
> it implemented as a fallback, so that one could run it without an
> additional
> thing in front of it for handling static resource requests.
>
> (2) So far so good. But now comes the problem:
>
> "guile-fslib" has a module named "string-utils" and a module named
> "list-utils".
> In my guile web development example code I also have modules with those
> names.
> Guile then gets confused about which one I am referring to, when I
> `(use-modules
> ...)` them and in the code that makes use of the functions from those
> modules,
> it then claims, that no bindings with some name exist, because it has
> looked
> into the "list-utils" or "string-utils" of the guix package, instead of
> the one
> of my web project.
>
> (3) Thoughts:
>
> I don't know how to resolve this. I think it is very unreasonable to have
> to
> look out to name no module the same name as any module in any library I am
> using. Obviously many libraries or projects will have some list utilities
> or
> helpers for convenience. Many projects will have some special string
> functions.
> Having a name like "string-utils" or "string-helpers" should not be an
> impossibility.
>
>  From a past/previous case of this, I remember someone saying I should get
> my
> load path in order. But what does this mean? In my projects I invoke Guile
> doing
> something like this:
>
> ~~~~
> guile -L . -L libs main.scm
> ~~~~
>
> I simply use the `-L` argument to pass in all the directories, in which my
> modules reside, for example "libs/list-utils.scm" or
> "libs/string-utils.scm",
> which I then import into various other modules and the main file, the
> entrypoint.
>
> (4) Solution ideas:
>
> (4.1) I already abstain from doing `(add-to-load-path ...)` manipulations
> in my
> code. As far as I know I am not doing anything dirty there. But ... Guile
> gets
> confused about which module to import and it seems to see the one from
> installed
> library first and then not consider the one of my current project. I am
> not even
> sure how Guile could possibly know which module I am referring to, because
> I am
> not telling it anything about that. So I am wondering, whether some dark
> magic
> of dynamically changing load path is perhaps a _necessary_ evil?
>
> (4.2) Or perhaps I have to give my modules multi part names like
> `(define-module
> (fslib helpers list-utils))` to scope module names? But that would be
> annoying
> when using them inside the library itself, because it is more to write and
> I am
> not sure others are doing that always. Usually I just name my modules
> `(list-utils)` or `(string-utils)`. Is that a bad thing, when these are
> modules
> of helper functions, which are not supposed to be exported for use in
> other
> projects?
>
> (4.3) The ugly solution I so far had to reach for, because I couldn't
> figure out
> a better way: Integrate library code directly into the source tree of a
> project,
> copying code. This cannot be the right way to do it, can it? Seems
> unlikely.
>
> How do you manage this? I know people have written much bigger projects
> than I
> have and surely someone has some dependency on another Guile library. How
> do you
> avoid these module name conflicts? How do you make sure that only
> libraries
> themselves use their own helper function modules?
>
> The bad thing is, that I always run into this, when I actually want to do
> something else. In this case build a website thing in Guile. But now I am
> side
> tracked again by this issue, because I don't know how to do this properly.
>
> Best regards,
> Zelphir
>
> --
> repositories:
> https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl,https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl
>