Request for Discussion: changing lib root directory calculation to improve load/:load

[Stephen C. Gilardi]

I came across this when updating the wikibook concepts page, Libraries section, to be correct for current Clojure behavior.

Here's the updated example from the wikibook:

        (ns example.ourlib
          (:load "ourlib/add1"
                 "ourlib/otherfunc"
                 "ourlib/morefuncs"))

With the change I'm proposing, this would become:

        (ns example.ourlib
          (:load "add1"
                 "otherfunc"
                 "morefuncs"))



The directory structure in src/clj/clojure is (in part):

        src/clj/clojure/
                core.clj
                core_print.clj
                core_proxy.clj
                genclass.clj

With the proposed change, this would become:

        src/clj/clojure/
                core/
                        core_print.clj
                        core_proxy.clj
                        genclass.clj
                core.clj

or, perhaps removing the "core_" prefixes:

        src/clj/clojure/
                core/
                        print.clj
                        proxy.clj
                        genclass.clj
                core.clj





Thanks,

--Steve

In an early implementation of the code that handles libs, the resource (file) for lib a.b.c was at the path "a/b/c/c.clj" within classpath. At that time it was natural to consider "a/b/c/" as the lib's directory. Later, the resource for the library a.b.c changed to the path "a/b/ c.clj" and the lib's directory became "a/b/". I think the lib handling code should be changed such that the directory associated with lib a.b.c is (again) "a/b/c/". The advantage of this comes into focus most sharply in a ":load" clause within "ns". Currently core.clj ends with 3 load calls to load in more pieces of clojure.core that were each big enough to warrant a separate file. There is also at least one lib in clojure-contrib that would need to be updated. I welcome discussion of this proposed change with the goal of entering an issue and providing a patch. In the patch, I would also update the doc string for clojure/require to reflect current Clojure behavior.

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