Re: [Jscheme-devel] feature request: strict-import

[Kyle R. B. <kyl...@gm...>]

> strict-import sounds like a reasonable feature.  The only thing I
> don't like about it is users having to change their imports into
> strict-imports.  Users might get paranoid that "import" is no longer
> good enough, so then they'd be typing the longer version all the
> time.  I wonder if it would be possible to do something like (strict-
> imports boolean) so that people wouldn't have to change their code,
> only the current loading behavior.


I actually prefer the strict-imports form you're suggesting.  It would have
to modify the interpreter instance or set a global correct?  Adding the
strict import at the top of a module/file would be nice since it would
effectively be a declaration.  Would it just have file/module scope or in
the entire interpreter?  I'm not sure what the best way would be to
implement this in the current code base.

Further comments below.
>
> > We're using JScheme in one of our production applications (for a
> > DSL) and we're looking to have it be as strict as possible so that
> > we end up deferring as few errors/issues to runtime as possible.
> > Detecting failed class imports (when the class is not actually on
> > the classpath) would help towards this goal.
>
> I like that argument.  I could have used it in previous battles
> discussions with management in years past.


There are probably a lot of features that could be added to help in this
respect (especially if they were optional, as suggested above).  I actually
would have pushed to use JScheme more if it weren't for the issue of lack of
confidence in the runtime code.  Unit testing helps but only goes so far.

I wonder if anyone is still using JVMs prior to 1.2?  I guess they
> could still use "old" JScheme.



> There may be a performance difference since ArrayList and HashMap
> > are not synchronized themselves - and it looks like the code in
> > JScheme is doing a lot of the synchronization itself anyway.
>
> We can run tests!


Since you brought that up, what is the opinion on testing during the build?
I see that tests are run, but they do not cause the build to fail as far as
I can tell.  Also, what would the opinion be on using JUnit as a testing
framework?  Or even one of the common Java build tools like Maven?

We use Maven and the dependency declarations are very valuable - also, it
would have been nice if JScheme were part of the ibiblio maven repository it
could be used from maven projects (and thus automatically downloaded).



Kyle