Steel Bank Common Lisp

"R. Mattes" <rm@...> writes:

> There seem to be changes/deprecations listed in the NEWS file. Is
> this the place to check (if so, maybe someone should add the
> bit-bash changes to the NEWS file).

These are only listed for changes to supported interfaces; the
bit-bashers have never been documented as supported.

Cheers,

Christophe

On Thu, 12 May 2005 17:03:38 +0100, Christophe Rhodes wrote:

> "R. Mattes" <rm@...> writes:
> 
>> There seem to be changes/deprecations listed in the NEWS file. Is
>> this the place to check (if so, maybe someone should add the
>> bit-bash changes to the NEWS file).
> 
> These are only listed for changes to supported interfaces; the
> bit-bashers have never been documented as supported.

Ok, that makes sense -- i'll file a bug report against the Debian
apckages then.

 Thanks, Ralf Mattes

On Thu, 12 May 2005, R. Mattes wrote:

> between version 1.17 and 1.18 of the file src/code/bit-bash.lisp the
> functions copy-to-system-area et al. got removed. Since these functions
> are used in some libraries distributed as Debian (source) packages i'd
> like to ask for some advice on how to hide these chages. Ideally these
> libraries should run both under sbcl 0.8.n as well as sbcl 0.9.n. What
> would be the preferred way to detect the availability of these functions?

Unhelpfull but true answer: those libraries are broken and should not have 
depended on internal functions in the first place. Fixing them to use 
portable code is the correct answer to the first approximation.

If you really really want to support obsolete SBCL's and depend on 
gone-for-good internal interfaces, then FIND-SYMBOL and FBOUNDP will
probably tell you what you need to know.

> BTW, is there a place in the sources where such changes are documented
> (something like a ChangeLog)? Upgrading my systems without knowing a
> priory where to expect problems sometimes quickly degrades into
> trial-and-error ... :-) There seem to be changes/deprecations listed in
> the NEWS file. Is this the place to check (if so, maybe someone should
> add the bit-bash changes to the NEWS file).

At least I'm not too wild about documenting changes to internal interfaces 
in NEWS. If you need more comprehensive coverage, then cvs2cl should get 
you a ChangeLog based on commit messages, which are often more detailed 
then NEWS. ...or you can just subscribe to sbcl-commits and/or sbcl-devel,
and get the news hot off the keyboard. ;-)

Cheers,

  -- Nikodemus              Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious."
                   Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs."

On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 06:52:15PM +0300, Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
> On Thu, 12 May 2005, R. Mattes wrote:
> 

Sorry for the late reply - our mailbox disk filled up :-/

> 
> Unhelpfull but true answer: those libraries are broken and should not have 
> depended on internal functions in the first place. Fixing them to use 
> portable code is the correct answer to the first approximation.

Helpfull - i'll file a bugreport. 

> If you really really want to support obsolete SBCL's and depend on 
> gone-for-good internal interfaces, then FIND-SYMBOL and FBOUNDP will
> probably tell you what you need to know.

That's what i do right now. Seems to work well enough.

> >BTW, is there a place in the sources where such changes are documented
> >(something like a ChangeLog)? Upgrading my systems without knowing a
> >priory where to expect problems sometimes quickly degrades into
> >trial-and-error ... :-) There seem to be changes/deprecations listed in
> >the NEWS file. Is this the place to check (if so, maybe someone should
> >add the bit-bash changes to the NEWS file).
> 
> At least I'm not too wild about documenting changes to internal interfaces 
> in NEWS. If you need more comprehensive coverage, then cvs2cl should get 
> you a ChangeLog based on commit messages, which are often more detailed 
> then NEWS. ...or you can just subscribe to sbcl-commits and/or sbcl-devel,
> and get the news hot off the keyboard. ;-)

I can see the reason behind not starting to document internal changes. I guess
it's unfortunate that some libraries need to use these functions.

 Thanks for the answer

   RalfD


> Cheers,
> 
>  -- Nikodemus              Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious."
>                   Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs."