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Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2024 18:56:15 +0200
From: Alexander Fedorov <varedif....@gmail.com>
Dear all,
Over 10 years ago, SBCL implemented the Package-Local Nicknames (PLNs)
extension. Since then, PLNs have also been adopted by multiple
implementations (ABCL, CCL, ECL, Clasp, Allegro CL and LispWorks) and
are now widely used in many projects.
However, PLNs are still considered experimental, as stated in the SBCL
manual, since there is no formal specification for them, and each
implementation interprets various corner cases differently. While the
need for a specification has been previously discussed, I was unable
to find any publicly accessible draft for one.
Therefore, I have drafted a specification intended to become a CDR
document. I initially wrote this draft about a year ago and have
recently revised it. You can find the latest version here:
https://gleefre.github.io/cdr-package-local-nicknames/index.html.
There are currently nine unresolved standardization issues, each with
at least one proposed resolution. Input on those issues would be
particularly helpful, but any feedback is welcome!
P.S. I am sharing this link across multiple platforms to reach as many
lispers as possible. This includes various mailing lists (Lisp Pro,
CDR-discuss and -devel for various CL implementations); IRC channels
(#commonlisp and implementation-specific ones); the Lisp Discord
server; several Telegram groups; and a post on Reddit. If you have any
suggestions for additional places to share the link, please let me
know.
My apologies to those receiving this message multiple times.
Best regards,
Alexander Fedorov.
Alexander,
I have not read this specification draft, but when asked for plns by a
customer I found it easy to implement years ago with little
controversy from my point of view, even on top of our Hierarchichal
Packages implementation. The only discrepancy I had found (which
might now be corrected, since it was in 2019) was that sbcl's
documentation described plns as not being abot to co-exist with
global names. I made the assumption that the documentation was either
incorrect or out-of-date, based on my experiments with plns in sbcl as
I was implementing them in Allegro CL.
The documentation for Allegro CL has been available since the
implementation was provided in a patch for 10.1, and the current
description is here:
https://franz.com/support/documentation/current/packages.html#local-nicknames-1
Hopefully there are not too many conflicts with your proposed spec.
Duane Rettig
