[Scheme-reports] Module Directory

[Noah Lavine <noah.b.lavine@x>]

Hello all,

I have a request for one more thing to be standardized as part of WG1
Scheme, and I hope it is not too late (please let me know if this is
not the right forum to discuss this in).

I believe that in addition to a module system, we need a standard
directory for people to put R7RS modules in. This would be for modules
that used the R7RS module system and R7RS modules, and would be in
addition to whatever place implementations put modules using their own
extensions.

This would allow different Scheme implementations to share modules,
and perhaps more importantly, allow Scheme libraries to have standard
install scripts that would work for all R7RS implementations. This
would also make it easier for people to package Scheme libraries for,
say, Linux distributions.

For evidence that this would be useful, look at the Makefile for Alex
Shinn's fmt library (http://synthcode.com/scheme/fmt/) - there is a
target to install on Gauche systems, another one for PLT/Racket, and
another for Chicken. Packaging would be a lot nicer if the install
command looked more like "cp -R <source-dir> <r7rs-module-directory>",
and it worked for all implementations.

I don't think it matters much where the directory is. To me it would
seem most natural to use /usr/lib/r7rs on Unix machines and something
analogous on Windows ones.

Noah Lavine

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