BAPHOMET

Extensible definition forms supporting packages-as-types convention for Common Lisp.

About

Using the BAPHOMET library requires careful consideration as it may involve significant rewrites to your code-base. It offers many advantages for writing Common Lisp software, but demands sacrifice, discipline, and utter devotion in exchange.

What you gain:

static-typing syntax for Common Lisp
extended type model
consistent definition form syntax
language-oriented programming support

What you lose:

the packages-as-namespaces idiom
clean and tidy interoperability with other Lisp libraries

Definer macros try to do the right thing, but at present the library doesn't hijack package interning for symbols to force type-validation. That means you can bypass the provided interface (whether accidentally or intentionally) to intern symbols in the wrong type-packages, change the value of a symbol to an invalid type for that package, and all sorts of other madness. However, if you stick to the interface and follow the packages-as-types convention devoutly, you shouldn't run into any trouble while I nitpick over the best way to enforce type-validation on a package basis.

History

The BAPHOMET library began life as a fork of DEMACS, went through a few name changes, took inspiration from DEFINER and CL-DEF, then got hoodwinked into adopting the packages-as-types convention for the Blackfire and Quicksilver projects.

03-27-2022

The present codebase was in the midst of yet another massive rewrite, so the documentation has been excluded from the present code-dump due to its appalling inapplicability.

The current code-base doesn't compile and load, but I hope to get it working for the next Quicklisp release.

I've excluded the following type-categories from this code-dump, because they depend on or are dependencies for unreleased Black Brane software:

primitives
environments
namespaces
readtables
interfaces
sequences
categories
domains
models
analogues
metamachines
machines

Some code was extracted from BAPHOMET and moved to the Quicksilver quantum compiler suite, but it will be returned to this library because it's needed here as part of the support for the packages-as-types convention.

Additionally, in the process of this rewrite the code-base got a little disorganized:

macro-definers are in definition-forms/functions.lisp
first-class evaluation operators are in types.lisp
def:fexpr is in canonical-forms.lisp
the parser module doesn't follow BAPHOMET definer syntax
the BAPHOMET and DEF packages still export symbols that no longer exist in this code-dump

Support

This library is built and tested on macOS with the following Lisp implementations:

LispWorks 8.0.0 (64-bit)
SBCL 2.2.4
Clozure-CL 1.12.1
GNU CLISP 2.49.92
ECL 21.2.1
ABCL 1.9.0

Authors

@thephoeron
@vy

License

Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.