RE: Importing items used in MODULE-COMPLIANCE and AGENT-CAPABILITIES

["Presuhn, Randy" <Randy_Presuhn@bmc.com>]

Hi -

> From: C. M. Heard [mailto:heard@pobox.com]
> Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 15:58
> To: Mreview (E-mail)
> Subject: Importing items used in MODULE-COMPLIANCE and
> AGENT-CAPABILITIES
...
>    Although exemptions to this general requirement are granted by RFC
>    2580 Sections 5.4.3 and 6.5.2 for names of objects appearing in the
>    OBJECT clause of a MODULE-COMPLIANCE macro invocation or in the
>    VARIATION clause of an AGENT-CAPABILITIES macro invocation, it is
>    nonetheless RECOMMENDED by these guidelines that such symbols be
>    included in the module's IMPORTS statement.  There are two reasons
...

I think the RECOMMENDation is the right thing to do.
The "redundancy" rationale of 5.4.3 could have been used
in RFC 2578 clause 3.2 to make the same kind of exception
for the "module.descriptor" notation in general, but we didn't
do that, so we're currently stuck with somewhat inconsistent
rules about when IMPORTS statements are REQUIRED.

A compiler needs to handle the case where one of these symbols
is IMPORTed for other reasons, so the RECOMMENDation can't hurt.

 ------------------------------------------------------
 Randy Presuhn          BMC Software, Inc.  1-3141
 randy_presuhn@bmc.com  2141 North First Street
 Tel: +1 408 546-1006   San José, California 95131  USA
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 My opinions and BMC's are independent variables.
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