On the Clojure 1.80-beta2 release thread
<https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clojure/_AGdLHSg41Q>, Ambrose
Bonnaire-Sergeant mentioned that he is monkey-patching clojure.core/load to
provide "an extension pointfor alternative compilers". I can see several
possibilities for such an extension:
- Alternative readers / sources
- Parse another language (e.g. Python) into Clojure forms
- Non-file sources (e.g., load code from database)
- Use a custom compiler
- Apply a transform (e.g., transform to continuation passing style)
I think the Clojure community would benefit from having such an extension
point built into core. I'm starting this thread to facilitate discussion
on how such an extension might look and function. To that end, I'm
certainly open to suggestions regarding interfaces, etc. In the interest
of kicking off discussion, however, I think a simple "namespace loader"
analog of Java's ClassLoader would go a long way towards satisfying the
above use-cases.
A simple way to represent a namespace loader would be as a function that
accepts a namespace name and returns a namespace (if the given namespace
was loaded) or nil (if the given namespace was not found). If the
namespace was "found", but could not be loaded for some reason (e.g.,
syntax error), the function throws an appropriate exception.
Namespace loaders could be specified by adding them to
clojure.core/*namespace-loaders*, a dynamic var containing a list of
namespace loaders. Namespace loaders are tried in turn until the given
namespace is found or the end of the list is reached. In the latter case,
loading fails.
So, what do people think? Am I missing some point in analysis? Would such
extensions be considered useful, or does it unnecessarily complicate
namespace loading? Any alternative designs you feel would be better?
Nathan Davis
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