On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 5:04 PM Simon Schlee <schleesi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I also would find it interesting to have something functor like, in the > sense of being able to create parameterized module instances. > My guess is that constructs like that are difficult to optimize and the > separation between runtime and compile time can become extremely blurry. > To the point that certain dynamic constructs would cause big chunks of > code to become ready for compiling at run-time only and at that time an > interpreter might be faster. > In fact, Racket has such a construct, units <https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/units.html>. They are first-class values, with run-time operations to link and invoke them, and they allowing for cyclic dependencies and multiple instantiations of a given unit. One of the major design goals of units was support for separate compilation (units predate `module` in Racket), which may rule them out for Nia's goal of modules with "optional *compile-time* arguments" per se. I guess I'm interested in what sorts of things these optional arguments might be used for: if dealing with the arguments could instead be done at link- or invoke-time, you might be able to use units to implement this module system. Regardless, I recommend anyone thinking about implementing a unit-like system look closely at units first: even when I ultimately ended up implementing my own unit-like system to meet a specific need (this was part of my RacketCon talk), my experience with units was very valuable in doing so. -Philip -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/CAH3z3gY4e%2BsvAQhHrtj21%3DJ2-%2B6GvVDhPpMY0PkiqbjzaNjOsQ%40mail.gmail.com.
