> A question Tim, if I may. In looking at sys-pkg.lisp, it seems like > there are a rather large number of import and export commands contained > there. Is this normal in lisp to have to hand-import and hand-export > so many symbols? Also, I'm a bit confused by the BOOT and VMLISP > package relations - are they in fact cross-pollinating and importing > from/exporting to each other? If so, wouldn't it be a bit cleaner to > get the common functionality into one package and have both BOOT and > VMLISP use that one?
Note that Axiom was written before common lisp existed. The initial common lisps and other prior lisps (like MACLISP, VMLISP, etc) did not have the idea of a "package" so I had to globally modify the code to make it work in common lisp (some of which had incompatible implementations before the standard). SYS-PKG was a hack to enable/disable package symbols in various lisps. It is poorly designed, badly implemented, horribly documented, and unmaintained. I think they should transfer the programmer who wrote it to a non-lisp related job or (equivalently) lift his license to program. In short, it is a hack and will go away in the rewrite. t _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
