Re: Keyword extensions to Compile

[Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM]

    From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
    To: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
    Subject: Keyword extensions to Compile

    I don't think that consensus was reached on this.  There was mail on
    both sides, and in the absence of a decision procedure, the discussion
    eventually petered out.  This will certainly be among the issues we want
    to get a final decision on as the ANSI spec is developed.

I don't recall any argument that other than "it might be nice for users
of that implementation" that suggested that implementations should
be allowed to put extra symbols in the lisp package.  I believe that
Kent and I made strong cases for not doing this based on the kinds of
problems it has caused us both.  The point is a portable program needs
to know what it is going to get when it says (make-package 'foo), an
implementation-specific program can know that it will get extra nice
stuff if it says (make-package 'foo :use 'extended-common-lisp), but a
portable program needs to be able to protect itself from that extra stuff.