Re: Package naming conventions

Pascal Bourguignon <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.lisp.cclan.general
Organization InformatiMago.
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Christophe Rhodes writes:
> As is clearly stated in the CLHS page for DOCUMENTATION:
> 
>   (documentation (find-package name) t)

Right. I've been misled by a bad implementation:
;; clisp-2.30:
[22]> (documentation (find-package :package) t)
*** - DOCUMENTATION: first argument #<PACKAGE COM.INFORMATIMAGO.COMMON-LISP.PACKAGE> is illegal, not a symbol
 

> >>  * Provide a tool to search by categories, etc.
> >
> > Why not search on the documentation strings rather?
> 
> Because documentation strings are unstructured.  If you're going to
> write your documentation strings in French, English search terms might
> not have the best of luck in finding your packages.

The guys in OO and reuse would have more to say here, but I'm not sure
that a few keywords are enough or even meaningful when you're browsing
a  collection of  software components  for one  matching your  need at
hand.  The problem  is quite different than the  classification of RPM
packages where you just install everything  to be sure, as long as you
have a big enough hard drive...

However,  you're right  that  (:documentation "strings")  are not  all
encompasing.  A package/module may  well be composed of several files,
both  lisp sources, resource  data and  documentation texts.   So, for
cclan  packaging, I  would say  that  it may  be better  to propose  a
convention  for  separate  documentation   files,  where  we  can  add
provisions for all niceties.

Ok.   I  agree  that  cclan  modules should  be  different  than  lisp
packages. But I still find interesting if we could take the convention
to have a  lisp package representing each cclan  module.  I would view
cclan modules  more like an external packaging  of (hierarchical) lisp
packages, that is,  conventions about how to structure  a set of files
that  can be distributed  as a  whole, with  as ultimate  purpose, the
loading of a lisp package.

-- 
__Pascal_Bourguignon__                   http://www.informatimago.com/
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Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.


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