Dear list,
I'm trying to make my abstraction library vanilla-compatible, but nevertheless I need to use some externals. Since I didn't keep up with the vanilla progress the last years, I wanted to ask what is the best method to make sure that all externals are loaded:
- use [declare ....]?
- use namespaces such as [list-abs/list1]?
I imagine that for libraries compiled into one external file the best alternative is declare, such as with Gem: [declare -stdlib Gem -stdlib zexy]. But for cases where the objects are separated, is there a conceptual/political/pratical difference between declaring and using namespaces in the object name? (I'm used to namespaces so that I know immediately from which library the object comes, but I can change that)
Adding to that: I'm still using mainly Pd-ext, and trying to branch out to vanilla and purr-data. Which is the best method to try to be compatible with these 3 distributions? E.g. [declare -stdlib Gem -stdlib zexy] works quite well on van+ext, but [declare -stdlib iemmatrix] doesn't in pd-ext; I must add a [iemmatrix] object to load the library. Is this a iemmatrix bug, or the [declare] object from pd-ext is too old?
Also: I imagine that there isn't a problem with repeated declarations? Inside each abstraction there is a [declare], and a patch can always use lots of them.
A suggestion: I can write [declare -stdlib xxxxx], and there will be no error message warning that the xxxxx library doesn't exist. Would it be good to have an error message, or even open deken to search for it?
Best,