Hello everybody,
If you've been following the darcs repository, you may have noticed the addition of Red Daly's package system. Upon working with it for a little while, I've concluded that I don't like it very much. I think it falls outside the scope of what ParenScript is intended to do (for instance, I don't think PS needs its own implementation of the Lisp reader...), tries to provide too much functionality, and from working with the code I find that it adds significant complexity without offering a corresponding increase in value.
My proposal, which I will start implementing next week, is based on the observation that there are really only two things needed for a namespace system for Javascript that will cover almost all use cases:
1. Being able to mangle identifiers for different namespaces. This can be easily implemented by associating a prefix string to a Lisp package.
2. Being able to import/use the ParenScript constructs from a different package. This can be implemented by adding some simple lookup logic to the ParenScript script-expander.
The underlying idea behind ParenScript is to integrate as closely as possible with Common Lisp, which is why I think the other possible namespace features (in-package, hierarchical imports, exports, etc.) will not be necessary, and, if they ever turn out to be, should be implemented in a different way than the current system.
Having made the observation above, I also think it is wrong to extend ParenScript in any way that will prevent its integration with Common Lisp (this is why the ParenScript reader in particular, and ParenScript files in general, now seem like a bad idea to me). Besides, that functionality is better implemented on a level above ParenScript (for example, I have absolutely no interest in having a function for compiling ParenScript files to Javascript files - it can be implemented trivially with the usual ParenScript forms, but why would you want to do it in the first place if Lisp lets you store the output in the web server's memory?).
Having come to these conclusions, I've decided to remove the reader and the ParenScript ASDF system from the ParenScript repository. Red, if you want to continue working on them, I really think that those parts will fit better in their own projects. I am planning to start a re-implementation of the package system and a long overdue refactoring of the compiler next week.
Happy hacking, Vladimir