Guix

A hook, in the present context, is a certain kind of extension point in a program that allows interleaving the execution of arbitrary code with the execution of a the program without introducing any coupling between the two. Hooks are used extensively in the extensible editor Emacs.

In the Common LISP Object System (CLOS), a similar kind of extensibility is possible using the flexible multi-method dispatch mechanism. It may even seem that the concept of hooks does not provide any benefits over the possibilities of CLOS. However, there are some differences:

• There can be only one method for each combination of specializers and qualifiers. As a result this kind of extension point cannot be used by multiple extensions independently.

• Removing code previously attached via a :before, :after or :around method can be cumbersome.

• There could be other or even multiple extension points besides :before and :after in a single method.

• Attaching codes to individual objects using eql specializers can be cumbersome.

• Introspection of code attached a particular extension point is cumbersome since this requires enumerating and inspecting the methods of a generic function.

This library tries to complement some of these weaknesses of method-based extension-points via the concept of hooks.