Greg Hendershott writes: > Pre-caveats: > - Maybe this has been discussed before? > - This is true (IIUC) of the old Planet as well as the new package system. > - Maybe it's true of every package system.
It's certainly a problem with many package systems. I have run into the exact situation you described in Clojure, when clojure.core (the fundamental namespace of the language) was enhanced with new names, two of which I had used in my own modules. I proposed a solution in my clj-nstools library (https://code.google.com/p/clj-nstools/source/browse/src/nstools/clojure_1_0.clj), but I don't think anyone except me ever used this. In the Python world, the general recommendation is not to use "from XXX import *" (which is the equivalent of a require in Racket) except for interactive use, or perhaps in small use-once scripts. But not everyone follows this advice. In practice, whether not this issue is a problem depends on how stable one's dependencies are. I don't expect much trouble with (require racket/string), but some new and rapidly evolving library might need more precautions. One potentially useful support tool would be a code analyzer that replaces a plain require by a require with only-in followed by the list of names from that package that are actually used. Developpers could apply the transformation before publishing a package, for example. Konrad. ____________________ Racket Users list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/users
