Packages

[shebs%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa (Stanley T. Shebs)]

I haven't found packages to be as much of a headache as some people on
this list.  They were both a pain and a necessity for PCLS, because the
code is sort of half PSL and half CL, and many symbols of the same name
exist in both packages (the psl: and lisp: packages don't use each other).
User-type code (at least around here) tends to use packages sparingly -
a program doesn't get its own package until it has a fat user manual and
a community of users :-).  As a consequence, adding the package operations
occurs late in development, after the program has stabilized somewhat.
Since there are no explicit package references in the source, there is a
strong inducement to avoid adding explicit internal symbol references
all over the place.

The package fixes that have been proposed seem to me like bandaids, and not
worth the effort.  A *real* solution would promote environments to full
first-class objects, and provide some good protocols for operating on
them.  Look to T for a first attempt, and to Eulisp for more concentrated
efforts to get it right.  Somehow, I don't see it ever getting into the
present form of CL.  (Strange how CL is starting to look a little dated
here and there...)

								stan