[Gardeners] Project Proposal: Standardized Utility Library

[Peter Seibel]

On Jun 7, 2006, at 12:36 PM, Luís Oliveira wrote:

> Ian Eslick <eslick at csail.mit.edu> writes:
>>
>> Proposal: 1) Pull together a repository of common lisp utilities  
>> under
>> an MIT or BSD style license (no restrictions) to try to enable the
>> world of asdf-installable packages to come to depend on a single
>> common library and so that newcomers will have a body of existing  
>> code
>> they can exploit to save time and effort.  Start by reviewing common
>> libraries and functions (from Genera, PCL, Norvig's book, Graham's
>> books; as well as arnesi, kmrcl, clocc, etc) and figuring out how to
>> organize them into a simple namespace such as utils.lists, utils.os,
>> etc.
>
> While I think this a very useful project, I don't see much point in
> creating yet another arnesi/kmrcl/clocc. Nikodemus's suggestion of
> splitting this project into multiple separate packages/systems seems
> saner.

My understanding of what Ian was proposing was something more like  
what you talk about below: a Standard Library that gathers together  
the many bits of code that are available out there and packages them  
up in a uniform way, possibly available as a single download. The  
whole point--again as I understand it--is exactly *not* to have a  
bunch of separate packages but rather a big ball of mud that includes  
a bunch of stuff so that everyone else can just say, "Get version  
1.2.3 of the CL Standard Library and a compliant Lisp implementation  
and you can run this code."

-Peter


-- 
Peter Seibel           * peter at gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
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