On 15.04.2009, at 23:44, rzeze...@gmail.com wrote: > That aside, I agree Contrib is a sandbox, but how big of a sandbox is > it? That's the question I pose. I think it's irrational to put every > Clojure library/framework that comes along into Contrib, because it > becomes a Tower of Babel and ultimately fails. If someone wants to
Right. The sandbox approach was useful and sufficient in the early period of Clojure development, with an evolving language and few contributed libraries. In the long run, the sandbox may remain useful, but certainly not sufficient. > publish a Clojure library, then it's simple enough to post it up on > GitHub, or what have you, and send a link to the Google group. That is true, but having to download a dozen of libraries from various sites with somewhat different conventions and somewhat different installation procedures can be very discouraging for users. > Along with the Core incubator idea, I could also picture Contrib as > something similar to Haskell with Batteries. A top selection of user > contributed libraries that add major value to the core. I feel duck- > streams is one such example. Indeed. At the moment, clojure-contrib is part incubator, but much more importantly the starting point of what I would call the "Clojure standard library", in the sense of containing functionality of general interest but yet too domain-specific to be part of the core. I think it would be useful to formalize this concept of a "standard library" that is a single entity from the point of view of users who just want to download a jar file and get going. A standard library would also define certain conventions and APIs and thus prevent future users from having to choose among ten essentially equivalent but yet incompatible libraries for file handling or for XML parsing. Of course there are a couple of open questions: Who decides what goes into the standard library? Who maintains it in the long run? Are external dependencies allowed and if yes, how are they handled? I think the only reasonable answer to the first two questions is "a group of competent volunteers", which then raises the question of how that group is defined. Konrad. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
