1.6.3 Module Semantics

For the purpose of compiling Scheme code, each top-level require makes the identifiers exported by its feature’s module defined (or defmacroed or defined-syntaxed) within the file (being compiled) headed with those requires.

Top-level occurrences of require-if make defined the exports from the module named by the second argument if the feature-expression first argument is true in the target environment. The target feature compiling should be provided during this phase of compilation.

Non-top-level SLIB occurences of require and require-if of quoted features can be ignored by compilers. The SLIB modules will all have top-level constructs for those features.

Note that aggregate catalog entries import more than one module. Implementations of require may or may not be transitive; code which uses module exports without requiring the providing module is in error.

In the SLIB modules modular, batch, hash, common-lisp-time, commutative-ring, charplot, logical, common-list-functions, coerce and break there is code conditional on features being provided?. Most are testing for the presence of features which are intrinsic to implementations (inexacts, bignums, ...).

In all cases these provided? tests can be evaluated at compile-time using feature-eval (see feature-eval). The simplest way to compile these constructs may be to treat provided? as a macro.