Olivier Galibert <galibert(a)pobox.com> writes:
Do you realize that if external third party C modules become the
rule, we can't change anything to the Mule implementation or the
lisp system? That we couldn't have ported to win32? That the "gung
ho" changes would have been impossible to make?
I don't think we need to worry about binary compatibility at all.
It's clear that, given the current state of affairs, it is impossible
to maintain anything close to that.
As for the source compatibility, the only sane way of handling modules
I can think of is to define and document a *minimum* set of primitives
that are allowed in modules. But not even these should be cast in
stone, I think -- modules are pretty much meddling with the
implementation (more convenient meddling, but still meddling), and we
should always have a right to change it.