[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] SRFI import format

[Dave Herman]

> One approach would be to modify existing (and future) SRFIs to
> explicitly state which language standards (currently R5RS, R6RS, both
> or neither) it applies to.

A variation on this approach would be to say that all SRFI's are 
associated with a particular RnRS. The SRFI's that exist are R5RS, and 
once R6RS becomes official, SRFI numbering restarts at 1 and all new 
SRFI's will be associated with R6RS.

In order for an R5RS SRFI to be considered an R6RS SRFI it must be 
resubmitted, possibly with changes (the new SRFI's could probably be 
expressed as deltas). Then you would specify which set of SRFI's you 
were referring to explicitly:

     (import srfi r5rs 13) ;; old string srfi
     (import srfi r6rs 6)  ;; new string srfi

(It's debatable whether there should be allowed to be a "default" RnRS 
version associated with a particular Scheme implementation -- it saves 
you one token but the implicitness means code would break when e.g. 
migrating from r6rs to r7rs.)

Anyway, these are questions for the SRFI editors.

> An alternative would be for R6RS to explicitly state "this section
> obsoletes SRFI n", and to guarantee that attempting to import an
> obsoleted SRFI would either 1) throw a condition; or 2) have no
> effect.

I don't think R6RS should create such dependencies on/in the SRFI's.

Again, these decisions should be made by the SRFI editors. I'll send an 
email to the srfi-editors email address to alert them to this thread, in 
case it hasn't caught their attention.

Dave