[Xsb-development] Packages and towards a new release

[<ts...@cs...>]

Last week, Rui, Luis, David and I talked about the system and decided
that we'd like to aim for Feb 1 for putting out a new version.  We've
done a lot since March, including

-- replacement of aborts by catch-throw

-- fixing up attributed variables and the constraint interface (still
some stuff left to do before the release)

-- adding some form of tabled once into the engine code, though we may
or may not be ready to publicize it in this release.

-- adding the xsbdoc package

-- adding the ColdDeadFish ontology management package

along with other things I've forgotton.  


One of the things I'd like to try to do for the next release is to
rectify our use of packages somewhat, and I'd like comments before I
do this.

We're adding at least two big packages, so XSB is getting to be larger
than it has been.  I think we're far away from having a bloated
download, but I do think its useful to move inessential or special
purpose features, even when important, to the package subdirectory.
Then users who are limited in space (e.g. the occasional PDA users of
XSB) can remove some or all of the packages and make a relatively lean
system.

-- I'm not sure what the criterion should be between a library file
and a package, but I think that some of the library files are in the
wrong place:

++ It appears that the ODBC and Oracle interfaces are prime candidates to
move to the packages subdirectory as these are special-purpose
interfaces.

++ It also appears that the justifyLP file should also be moved to
packages, as this is primarily used by XMC (though this probably means
that the rest of us are under-utilizing justifyLP).

++ basic_props.P should probably be moved to the xsbdoc package and
xsb_ciao.P will be eliminated.  The tradeoff is that I'll be ensuring
that the default compiler recognizes four new declarations that will
support xsbdoc.

++ xnmr.P should be moved to the packages subdirectory, especially
since it depends on the sModels package.

++ the iprolog package may or may not remain -- it is maintained and
distributed by Declarativa, so I need to work out some details of how
to keep the package up-to-date.

Finally, I think that we should continue to support more frequent
releases of certain packages (e.g. flora2, xmc, xsbdoc, and
ColdDeadFish) than we have system releases, by allowing people to
download them separately from our sourceforge home page.  However,
these packages would continue to be distrbuted with XSB releases as
now.

All of this is relatively easy to do, and I'm willing to do it myself
if people agree with this approach.  

Silence will be interpreted as agreement :-)

Terry