When working on a larger lisp code base, one with 10+ files in one package, I begin to get nervous about accidental name conflicts, and was wondering how other people deal with this.

Here's the scenario I'm worried about:

dsl.lisp, written by a coworker two years ago, has a number of small functions that are helpers for the main #'WRITE-DSL-REPORT function; one of these helpers is #'GET-WAN-IPS
nagios-config.lisp, written by me today, has a number of small functions that are helpers for the main #'WRITE-NAGIOS-CONFIG function; one of these helpers is #'GET-WAN-IPS
I miss the compiler warning about redefining #'GET-WAN-IPS
I test my code, it works in my REPL so I commit and call it a day
Code eventually gets pushed to production and #'WRITE-DSL-REPORT is broken

It doesn't happen very often (and testing procedures usually catch stuff before it goes to production), but it seems like there should be a nicer way to deal with helper functions that you want to develop/test from the REPL, but don't need to be used outside the current file.

I had a few ideas to solve it, none of which I really like. I could add a top-level FLET for the file, but the extra indentation will be annoying and it'll be harder to test/maintain those helper functions. I could define a helper package, per-file, and put my helper functions in that package (e.g. (defun nagios-config-helpers::get-wan-ips ...)), but that feels funny and awkward, which usually means it's a bad idea. I could break up my code into many smaller packages, each exporting and importing the functions needed elsewhere in the system, but that seems like recipe for dependency headaches and a lot of unneeded paperwork.

Do other people have this anxiety? Are there elegant ways to deal with it? (besides medication and more unit testing)

Thanks,

-- 
Ryan Davis
Acceleration.net
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