Dear Everyone, I would like to make a suggestion for the future of Clojure, and hopefully prompt a discussion. My comment comes as a result of my experience trying to port code to 1.3. I have run into numerous problems, most of which come from 1.3's incompatibilities with my 1.2- targeted code and the libraries I am using.
While I hope and expect that none of the problems I'm encountering are insurmountable, they are requiring substantial time and effort. It raises the question of what happens to all of the many existing Clojure 1.2-based libraries in Clojars and on github. Many of these are very useful, but not necessarily actively maintained. A lot of effort will need to go into porting this code and much of it may be effectively lost. That seems like an unfortunate waste and it undermines the growing ecosystem of Clojure libraries. So my request for Clojure's future development, is that backwards compatibility not be broken. This means that Clojure code needs a way of designating what Clojure version it is targeted for. Then, for example, the Clojure 1.4 jar should be able to "drop down" into backwards compatibility mode to compile and run 1.3-code, or invoke a 1.3-script's vars from a 1.4 script. It would also be super-cool if someone can figure out how to do this for existing 1.2 libraries. I love that Clojure is being constantly improved and developed, and I thank everyone who has been working so hard on it. In my opinion, though, third-party libraries are as important as the core language. Clojure 1.3 interoperates with java libraries very well -- so why not with Clojure 1.2 libraries? Best regards, Arthur -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
