[plt-scheme] Error reporting and batch compilation

From: Joe Marshall (jrm at ccs.neu.edu)
Date: Wed Aug 11 16:29:44 EDT 2004

John Clements <clements at brinckerhoff.org> writes:

> On Aug 11, 2004, at 1:08 PM, Joe Marshall wrote:
>
>>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
>>
>> "Richard C. Cobbe" <cobbe at ccs.neu.edu> writes:
>>
>>>   For list-related administrative tasks:
>>>   http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme
>>>
>>> Lo, on Wednesday, August 11, Matthias Felleisen did write:
>>>
>>>> The C people didn't get this any "rigther" than the Scheme people.
>>>> They were forced to report as many type and syntax errors in one
>>>> pass as possible because they were and are batch people, who just
>>>> don't understand how incremental work helps people.
>>>
>>> Right, but as execution time increases, the distinction between batch
>>> and interactive development decreases.  It's really not very hard to
>>> write a Scheme program whose execution time (by which I mean time
>>> between hitting the `execute' button and getting a prompt back) is
>>> comparable to running make.
>>>
>>> If someone can suggest a testing strategy that doesn't require hitting
>>> execute after every change (or even most of them), then I'd love to
>>> hear
>>> about it.
>>
>> In other Scheme and Lisp systems, hitting an error doesn't return you
>> to top level.  Instead, it creates a nested REPL with a continuation
>> that re-attempts whatever caused the error.  Within this nested REPL,
>> you can edit and debug the code and proceed without losing your state.
>
> I don't see how this is relevant to Richard's issue; he wants (or is
> discussing) continuous background testing, esp. to catch syntactic
> errors (where this thread started); how does the system you describe
> help you with this?

It addresses the issue of increase of execution time which seems to be
exacerbating the other problem.



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