New module system (was Re: compiling syntax and macro)

[Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj at mdj dot nada dot kth dot se>]

Jost Boekemeier <jostobfe@calvados.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> writes:

> > Is the new module system supporting syncase, too?  If so, all I need
> 
> It only supports syntax-rules.

There is a confusion here:

Keisuke refers to the module system which will replace the current
one, while you refer to the module system you are developing.

These two are not necessarily the same thing.

I think the normal mode of Guile development should be pretty wild:
people work on different hacks in parallel, some of these gets adopted
as "official".

But, both the evaluator and the module system are special cases since
they are both 1. a major effort to write and 2. have effects on the
entire Guile.

I'm not happy about putting up "barriers" for people's work.  Some
people actually think the reason why Guile hasn't developed quickly in
the past is that we have been putting up barriers.  That isn't true.
There are other reasons.

However, regarding the evaluator, we have to make sure that new
candidate evaluators are free from limitations.

Concerning the module system:

We have warned previously that this third time we're switching module
system will be the last, so this time we intend to get things right.
So, we will go through a proper design phase for the new module system
first.  This is about to begin soon.  (If no-one of the other
maintainers initiates this before me, it will happen directly after
generic translation support and GOOPS integration.)

Jost is going ahead and makes his own design.  That is very
interesting, and I hope we can use ideas from his design, but it
should be clear that it isn't certain that the new official module
system will look like Jost's.

(I hope we can build in a way that we can support alternative module
system implementations, though.)