Actually, I have already mentioned to Jürgen that we need some way of specifying a default serach path for )LOAD and friends. However, I have not seen it as particularly important yet since we don't have a completed package manager yet.
I personally dislike workspaces and I know I'm not alone in the desire to have plain source files instead of an opaque format. Therefore, I don't really have any particular drive to make it. But, go right ahead and make one if you feel that would be useful. Regards, Elias On 15 May 2014 22:30, Blake McBride <blake1...@gmail.com> wrote: > Greetings, > > I am in the process of writing a proposed README.txt file for the SQL > interface to GNU APL. That package comes with a file named sql.apl that is > a shell script to startup GNU APL with the SQL shared library and APL > routines already loaded. > > IMO, that method of loading it has a few problems. It only works from the > distribution directory unless the user knows (without understanding the > pieces) what paths need to be changed - which is undocumented. It is > further complicated by the need for the startup path of APL and its > relation to the workspaces directory used by APL. All this is way too much > for a newbie. > > The second problem is that that script pre-loads needed APL functions. > Again, when a newbie loads their own workspace, they will lose the APL > routines. > > My suggestion, without necessarily removing sql.apl, is to have that > package include an actual workspace that can be loaded. That workspace > would be a copy of sql.apl except that: > > 1. sql∆∆load_library world be renamed to SQL∆LoadLibrary to be consistent > with the other functions in that workspace. > > 2. SQL∆LoadLibrary will take an argument specifying the full path of > lib_sql.so rather than having it hard-coded. > > Along with some documentation, I think this will make the SQL library a > lot easier to use for newbies. > > Thanks. > > Blake > >
