Proof of concept for system-local nicknames for packages
Actually doing this right could be a lot of work, I’m just putting this out there now in case anyone finds it interesting. I’ll be working on it and dogfooding it with personal projects when I have the time, but it’s strictly experimental for now.
It works by checking for a property in system definitions, that when found provides a list of (package-name nickname package-name nickname ..etc) the user would like to be in effect during loading and compiling of their system.
If such a property is found, it then ensures that the nicknames requested are bound to the packages requested during load and compile of the user’s system files, and returns things to normal afterwards.
It’s really simpler than I’m making it sound, check the dummy.asd file & dummy.lisp, and test.lisp. And by simple, I mean little in the way of error checking etc. The included test does however load a system with the package-name :cl bound to something other than common lisp, and works as expected.
What it can do, now:
- ensure that an existing package is bound to a requested nickname for the duration of a system load, and return names to their prior state afterwards.
What it can’t yet, but will do:
- ensure that given nicknames are available for the duration of a system load (to be used internally) and then cleared or restored afterwards.
To be truly useful, this would require a SLIME contrib as well.
This has been trivially tested in sbcl, ccl, and allegro free edition, and by trivially, I mean only insofar as shown in test.lisp.