I think the desired default behavior is going to vary with the user, so I suggest auto caching by default should be a configured option.
If you're going to use a ~/.ikarus to store compiled files, I would also suggest making an ~/.ikarusrc file which would contain the auto caching option and the library paths. but if you have reasons for preferring environment variables that would be fine too. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Abdulaziz Ghuloum <[email protected]> wrote: > > On May 25, 2009, at 1:28 PM, Ramana Kumar wrote: > >>> And yes, it definitely >>> should not be "on" by default. The user has to explicitly >>> enable it somehow. >> >> I think that is unjustified... > > I think both positions can be justified. > >> but only because I can't think of the drawbacks to auto caching. >> (Why isn't disabling it what you have to do explicitly?) > > For one thing, I don't think ikarus (or any software really) should > be writing stuff to your file system without you explicitly giving > permission (not to mention making network connections and calling > home base every time you start up, or auto downloading of updates, > etc. which I think are pure evil). > Now maybe we can make an exception to the cache directory on the > same ground that, say, a browser auto caches web content. Which > takes us to the second thing ... > > Depending on what you do, this cache directory can grow to be very > big (this is a problem with auto caching itself regardless of if > it's enabled by user request or by default). For example, I get > many libraries for testing purposes, and if every time I use one > such library, it gets compiled and cached indefinitely, I *think* > that would be a serious problem. > > This is to say, convince me of otherwise please. :-) > > Aziz,,, >
