Re: PATCH: alias modules

[Peter Stephenson <pws@pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>]

Zefram wrote:
> We don't want aliasing under user control.  My view is that aliases are
> for backward compatibility only.
> 
> The point of hierarchical module names is that each module can
> have a canonical global name, and users loading modules can specify
> unambiguously which module they want.  To do that, the user has to give
> the fully-qualified module name at some point.  And since modules are
> usually (auto)loaded in initialisation files anyway, there's no typing
> saved by letting the user set up an abbreviated name.
> 
> But really the reason why I did it this way is that it seems neater.

Still not convinced.  I'm not interested in saving typing this way, but I
am interested in being able to load different modules for testing without
fiddling with $fpath.  The bogus modules don't seem neater to me,
particularly if you look at the library directory without knowing what you
expect to find.  Aliasing with zmodload seems to me to avoid, not create,
hidden grotesqueries within the shell (certainly if you consider the
essential modules to be part of the shell, which I would).

> But as I explained
> earlier, my intention is that there won't eventually be so many.  3.1.7
> should contain aliases only for those modules that existed in 3.1.6,
> and we should consider at some point which modules are really important
> enough to warrant backward compatibility with the old names.

The way I suggested, you can decide by yourself very easily which names
are to exist without the zsh/ prefix.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk>