[racket] Question about modules

This doesn't seem to help with the problem facing planet, namely how
to tell if it is safe to instantiate a module twice or not. Planet can
already instantiate both modules fine -- it just need to know it is
safe to do so.

In your A/Z example, the question is if A and Z communicate B version
1 values to B version 2 or not (well, planet actually want to know if
B version 1 can cope with B version 2 values coming back to it or not,
roughly).

Robby

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>
> Lib A can link to an instantiation of Lib B version 1
>  and
> Lib Z can link to an instantiation of Lib B version 2
>
>
>
> On Apr 7, 2011, at 3:01 PM, Robby Findler wrote:
>
>> How?
>>
>> Robby
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 12:47 PM, Matthias Felleisen
>> <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>> Units would solve this problem.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 7, 2011, at 7:32 AM, Robby Findler wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Mark Engelberg <mark.engelberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> The following two lines trigger an error:
>>>>>
>>>>> (require (planet dherman/memoize:3:1))
>>>>> (require (planet soegaard/math:1:4/math))
>>>>>
>>>>> The error says something along the lines that the soegaard package
>>>>> requires an older version of the memoize library, and the two can't
>>>>> coexist.
>>>>>
>>>>> Shouldn't modules protect me from this?  Shouldn't it be possible for
>>>>> the math library to use its own required version of the memoize
>>>>> library, without it screwing up my ability to require the latest
>>>>> version of the memoize library?
>>>>
>>>> In the fully general case, this is not possible: you need to
>>>> instantiate two copies of the same library and if that library has
>>>> some external state (say a database connection) or even internal state
>>>> that somehow goes from one version of the library to the other version
>>>> via the other packages (imagine that there was a generative
>>>> define-struct in there somewhere and values somehow make their way
>>>> from one version's maker to another version's selector), then strange
>>>> things start happening and the library breaks, through no real fault
>>>> of its own.
>>>>
>>>> In the world of Racket modules, you never have two instantiations of a
>>>> particular module at once -- they always share the same state (unless
>>>> you monkey around at lower level using the introspection facilities)
>>>> so when planet is asked to load two different versions into a single
>>>> program, it decides to be conservative and signal an error, rather
>>>> than violate this.
>>>>
>>>> That said, there are two things to note:
>>>>
>>>> - Planet has a kind of escape hatch where a library can declare that
>>>> it is fine with being instantiated multiple times. See section 6.2.3
>>>> of the planet docs.
>>>>
>>>> - Planet was probably too conservative on this front and probably in
>>>> Planet 2.0 the story will be different (and better).
>>>>
>>>> Robby
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>
>