Luke Gorrie luke@synap.se writes:
The inspector argument is only used to select the method. If we remove the inspector argument, then one method overwrites the other.
Even with the inspector argument, doesn't the backend-specific method completely shadow the generic one?
Yes, as long as you a pass a backend-specific inspector argument. That's currently always the case. In principle you could also pass something else (something that doesn't match the backend-specific specifier, e.g. nil) and the generic method would be called. But this option is currently not used.
Maybe the idea is to fall back if you decide to remove the backend-specific method?
swank.lisp is loaded after swank-lispworks, and it was a bit difficult to check if there was already a backend-specific version.
Helmut.