Re: A requires/provides approach to linking source code blocks

[Stefan Nobis <stefan-ml@snobis.de>]

Marko Schuetz-Schmuck <MarkoSchuetz@web.de> writes:

> I would find it useful to have a more declarative way for specifying
> sequence. I imagine e.g. using "#+REQUIRES:" and "#+PROVIDES:" to
> capture dependency and then have the exporter compute a sequence
> satisfying these.

I would say that declaring an explicit ordering of blocks via noweb is
quite declarative.

The tensions seems more to be between implicit and explicit ordering.
I'm quite a fan of letting the computer compute things, but in the
context of literate programming I tend to prefer explicit over
implicit. IMHO that's the main point of literate programming: Be more
explicit and document all the details. Try not to hide important
aspects.

If you have so many blocks that maintaining the order of the
concatenation seems like a burden and tiresome I would argue that you
are doing it wrong. Because in the end you need quite a good
understanding of the final order of the blocks or else maintaining the
implicit order via require/provide will also get out of hand.

I also second Tims concerns about the additional complexity and
feature creep.

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.