Re: [Gretl-devel] Re: comment on user-functions and packages
Allin Cottrell schrieb:
There's one related issue I'll mention. We want to ensure
that (a) all
gretl function _packages_ have unique names, and (b) that these names
correspond to the package's public interface (with ".gfn" appended). To
help enforce this I've removed the "Save As" button from the function
package editor -- it seems to me that button was inviting problems. In
addition, if you make a new package with public interface "somefunc",
then go to Save, you'll be prompted to save as "somefunc.gfn" (with a
choice of which directory to save to). If you overwrite the suggested
.gfn name, so that it no longer matches the public interface, you'll get
an error message.
Also related: when you're editing a function package you can edit the
code of the functions it contains, but you can't change the names of
those functions. In the (I hope) fairly unlikely case that you want ro
redo a function package, renaming the member functions, you'll have to
do something like this:
* Load the original package.
* "Edit" the original package and call up its code
* Copy and paste the code you want to a script window
* Rename the functions in the script, and run the script
* Create a new package that bundles the renamed functions
This is not supposed to be particularly easy, because messing around
with function names in existing packages would create a big programming
headache.
I completely understand the need for static function names. It seems to
me, however, that your requirement "b" (public function name == function
package name) then makes versioning of packages difficult.
In effect I think I don't quite understand the need for this requirement
b. Or maybe requirement b is really two requirements: First: public
function name == function package name. And second: function package
name == package filename plus ".gfn"?
I have various versions of packages that are easily distinguishible in
the package manager by their version number. But the names of the
functions in them are all the same. I manually save the packages with
version numbers in their filenames. What would be useful IMHO is to
automatically append the version number as a suffix (or interfix, to be
precise) to the package .gfn file, to keep the filename matched to the
actual version of the package.
Ok, it's late, maybe I just mixed something up...
-sven