[racket-dev] Constructing an identifier to an unexported binding

+1 


On May 23, 2013, at 9:42 AM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> 
> On May 23, 2013, at 9:34 AM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt <samth at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> 
> >> 2. Is it possible that we could solve the problem via a bootstrapping-only violation of our policy that you can add types to Racket w/o modifying existing modules?
> >
> > No. We can't specify types inside `racket/base` without making `racket/base` depend on Typed Racket.
> 
> 
> 1. I was proposing a fundamental change to the language, with an eye toward Racket 2.
> 
> 2. I was also proposing an experiment that temporarily creates such a dependency and we can then look for a refactoring that breaks the dependency again but in a way that supports the proper access to these base identifiers.
> 
> It shouldn't be necessary to specify types inside racket/base; it's only necessary to make the identifiers available somehow.  Then TR can do the type specification, but without using namespaces.  Protecting the exported identifiers from misuse could be done by convention -- naming them unsafe-<foo> or exporting them from a submodule named "private" -- or by enforcement -- for instance, rather than providing them, instead exporting a phase 1 syntax object that contains them with appropriate syntax taints / dye packs so that they can be used for free-identifier=? but not put into expanded code.
> 
> --Carl