[GBBopen-developer] SWANK cannot load when using initiate.lisp

[Dan Corkill]

> But this patch bring another issue: If you define the SWANK package 
> first, the real swank package will not load because it detect the 
> existence of swank package to decide whether load itself. So I must load 
> SWANK before GBBopen's initialite.lisp to get SWANK load correctly. But, 
> why should I load swank every time even when I don't need it ...
> 
> Still confused ... maybe you should NOT enable the extension-repl 
> facility (and use a variable from swank package) when user do not load 
> SWANK before GBBopen's initialite.lisp ...
> 
> Hope these notes can help you to find a best way to handle this issue.

Thanks.  SLIME needs a much better design for allowing simple extensions 
via its *after-init-hook* mechanism.  As you reported, the ordering issues 
make things complex.  The latest GBBopen commit of extended-repl.lisp deals 
with all this under the very latest SLIME updates (as of today).  There's 
no telling if future SLIME mods will break this again.  So, all you heavy 
SLIMErs, please report breakage (to those of us who don't use SLIME 
regularly!).

It's too bad, if SLIME simply had a cl-user::*slime-after-init-hook* 
variable (instead if its private swank::*after-init-hook* variable that 
can't be used without the package being present, so that it is worthless 
for making any external additions to SLIME easy), all these issues would be 
moot.  [SLIME does provide a "contribs" mechanism, but that is way too 
heavy handed for what GBBopen needs (and "contribs" is not application/tool 
specific, but global to all SLIME settings).]

-- Dan

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