Re: R7RS scope & yearly editions hga@xxxxxx 11 Sep 2020 14:30 UTC

> From: Lassi Kortela <xxxxxx@lassi.io>
> Date: Friday, September 11, 2020 9:10 AM
>
> [...]
>
> [...] The unfortunate thing with Scheme is the dearth of actively
> developed applications. Apps are needed to put library designs to
> the test.

This is actually a very, *very* bad sign about the state of the Scheme
world.  One I'm planning on addressing at least a bit, but Real Life
is hitting me very hard for the foreseeable future.

> [ library versioning ]
>
> At all times, we would make sure that code using different years'
> editions can easily be mixed. I.e. we would take care not repeat the
> Python 2 vs Python 3 incompatibility mistake.
>
> As for the specific naming, I guess (import (scheme char)) could be
> (import (scheme char 2020)). R6RS comes standard with a library
> versioning system, but it seems it hasn't gotten much traction.

Something I expressed a desire for in my R6RS no vote was being able
to load different versions of a library into one address space.  Not
at all sure how or if this could be done sanely, for example I'm not
sure how to take your above scheme and turn it into easy to use name
spacing.  But it could take some pressure off of the Python 2 and 3
incompatibility variety, the need to keep future versions of a library
entirely backwards compatible, enshrining mistakes.

- Harold