Stephen Compall wrote:
Stephen wrote:
Note that, as with Common Lisp, the namespace
system is separate from the package loading system, so you still need to
load the package.
That is a key statement... I don't think I've seen that in the docs or
at least not as clear as you've said it.
smalltalk--backstage--2.2--patch-56 also attached.
I'm not sure that saying it explicitly won't just encourage the
unfortunate mental conflation of package loading and namespaces brought
on by practice in certain other programming environments, though, so I
may not be in favor of this patch.
Coming into Gnu-smalltalk from java/C++/ruby I was expecting a single
statement would reference (and load) the correct package. So for me at
least, your patch is helpful to identify that packages and namespaces
are different.
I can see why the two are different when I look at the history of
Smalltalk, but it does seem to add complexity compared to
namespaces/packages in other languages.
As an aside: looking in packages.xml was helpful - I was wanting an
overview of where the packages are and what is available. Its all there.
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