> Well, not the same thing, but something related is the namespaces
> package in share, which just exposes the Lisp package system to
> the Maxima user. The namespaces global variable is a list of all
> defined namespaces. If each share package were loaded into its
> own namespace, then namespaces is a list of loaded packages.
>
> Another idea is that if there were a Maxima "require" system, that
> could obviate the need of the user to inspect the list of loaded
> packages. e.g. user says require(foo); without needing to know
> whether foo is already loaded.
>
> FWIW
>
> Robert Dodier
require(foo); would be great.
There were also some ideas, that package specific documentation
should be included in the package itself.
I think all the package handling issues should be solved together.
Namespaces, documentation, compilation...
Perhaps it would be beneficiary for packages to have a standard
folder structure like /src, /doc etc. Such requirement sometimes
result in higher quality. Right now there are many lisp and mac files
distributed with Maxima - a lot of them not documented, some of them
outdated and so on... If we would raise the bar for packages with
requirement of documentation, namespaces and so on, perhaps Maxima
would be less of a mess or at least a bit more focused mess than it
is now with regards to contrib/share packages.
Also I don't think 'importing' names from common lisp is beneficiary
(there is a package for 'unwind-protect'). 'require' is too lispy.
Something along 'use_package()' is better but not that clever also.
One has to assume that Maxima is not primarily used by programmers,
so it's better to clearly indicate that the command is 'programming'
oriented.
Regards,
Ziga