From: Jamie Zawinski
Subject: Re: 'provide' and 'require' and compiled files
Date:
Message-ID: <4146@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
It has always seemed to me that PROVIDE and REQUIRE are too vaguely
specified to be useful. The fact that it is not obvious what the
behavior of REQUIRE is in multiple correct implementations of Common
Lisp means that you cannot really expect use of it to be portable.
Why not use some kind of 'make' utility? There are several public
domain Lisp make-systems around. Or, you could do something really
minimalist, and just have a file of calls to LOAD.
Jamie
--
From: Barry Margolin
Subject: Re: 'provide' and 'require' and compiled files
Date:
Message-ID: <35891@think.UUCP>
In article <····@pt.cs.cmu.edu> ···@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski) writes:
>It has always seemed to me that PROVIDE and REQUIRE are too vaguely
>specified to be useful. The fact that it is not obvious what the
>behavior of REQUIRE is in multiple correct implementations of Common
>Lisp means that you cannot really expect use of it to be portable.
For this reason, the ANSI X3J13 committee voted last week not to
include PROVIDE and REQUIRE in ANSI Common Lisp. (Or we may simply
have removed the second argument to REQUIRE -- I don't have my records
with me here at home.)
Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.
······@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar