From: Barry Margolin
Subject: Re: CL Software Engineering problems
Date: 
Message-ID: <3husmp$72c@tools.near.net>
In article <·················@hobbes.ISI.EDU> ···@isi.edu writes:
>Use one of the defsystem utilities that is available on the net.  Mark
>Kantrowitz' from the CMU archives is one popular alternative.
>
>There is currently no standard way to do this, since the earlier CL
>require/provide mechanism has been removed from the ANSI standard.

The only thing that was removed in CLtL2 was the second argument to
REQUIRE.  However, it was added back later by X3J13, and it's in the ANSI
standard.
-- 

Barry Margolin
BBN Internet Services Corp.
······@near.net
From: Gareth McCaughan
Subject: Re: CL Software Engineering problems
Date: 
Message-ID: <3if935$7dk@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
In article <··········@tools.near.net>,
Barry Margolin <······@nic.near.net> wrote:

> In article <·················@hobbes.ISI.EDU> ···@isi.edu writes:
> >Use one of the defsystem utilities that is available on the net.  Mark
> >Kantrowitz' from the CMU archives is one popular alternative.
> >
> >There is currently no standard way to do this, since the earlier CL
> >require/provide mechanism has been removed from the ANSI standard.
>
> The only thing that was removed in CLtL2 was the second argument to
> REQUIRE.  However, it was added back later by X3J13, and it's in the ANSI
> standard.

From CLtL2:

  X3J13 voted in January 1989 (REQUIRE-PATHNAME-DEFAULTS) to eliminate
  the entire module facility from the language; that is, the variable
  *modules* and the functions PROVIDE and REQUIRE are deleted. X3J13
  commented that the file-loading feature of REQUIRE is not portable,
  and that the remaining functionality is easily implemented by user
  code. (I will add that in any case the specification of REQUIRE is
  so vague that different implementations are likely to have differing
  behavior.)

Of course you may well be right about the ANSI standard.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan     Dept. of Pure Mathematics & Mathematical Statistics,
·····@cus.cam.ac.uk  Cambridge University, England.    [Research student]