Custom Query (1030 matches)

in the working-0711 branch, the compiler traps certain kinds of compile-time PROGRAM-ERRORs (at least), WARNs about them, and produces a function that, when executed, complains about whatever errors were detected at compile-time.

? (defun bogus (x y) (eq x) y) ; misplaced paren
;Compiler warnings :
;   In BOGUS: Required arguments in (EQ X) don't match lambda list (FORM1 FORM2).
BOGUS

Unfortunately, the function that's created in this case takes 0 arguments; unless it's called with 0 arguments, one won't see the compile-time error reported.

When this happens when something is defined interactively, any previous (more) correct version of the function is quietly replaced with the 0-arg error-signaling version. Under the old behavior (where an error was signaled at compile-time), the old (presumably working) definition would have remained in place. With the new behavior, it may be necessary to reload code (if possible) and repeat a number of development steps to get back to the point where one has the opportunity to correct a simple syntax error. (I noticed this while working on the compiler, and find this aspect of the new behavior to be a big impediment to productivity.)

If this happens during COMPILE-FILE, I assume that the same sort of unfortunate side-effects occur (unless one is lucky enough to press ^{C before the binary is loaded.)}

I think that I understand some of the motivations for this change and hope that we can think of ways of satisfying the needs of all concerned parties.

Compiling a file containing:

(defun outer-fun ()
  (defun inner-fun () nil)
  (inner-fun))

gives a warning (undefined function inner-fun) when compiled with (optimize (safety 3)) but not otherwise.

On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 1:00 AM, Gary Byers <gb@…> wrote:
Sometimes when running the Cocoa IDE, people have reported seeing messages like:

'SystemFlippers: didn't consume all data for xmnu ..."

or something similar appear in the console window. Andrew said that he saw this when double-clicking on a lisp file to start the IDE.

AFAIK (er, "according to Google searches") this has something to do with Apple code not handling endianness of (classic Macos-style) resource IDs in some cases. AFAIK, these messages are harmless and uninteresting. I don't know how to tell in the general case whether a message like this is interesting; seeing meaningless gibberish like this presented as if it was something that the user would and should care about doesn't create a good impression; not calling the user's attention to something that's actually important isn't ideal either.

It's probably closer to the right thing to give some indication that there's some sort of diagnostic output available and not automatically pop up the console window when that output first appears. Whatever that indication is it should somehow be visible without being intrusive.

(I think that there are some leftover calls to NSLog in the IDE itself.)