[Omake] Memoizing functions.

[Aleksey Nogin]

Jason,

What's your current thoughts on adding memoizing functions?

I was about to start adding dependencies to all the .STATIC sections in 
the 0.9.8.x branch, but I realized that it is the wrong way to go, as:
  - I would have added a PATH dependency to all the .STATIC blocks using 
the CheckProg function
  - I would have added a CC and CFLAGS dependency to all the .STATIC 
blocks using the TryCompileC and its derivatives (CheckHeader, CheckLib, 
etc).

It seems wrong that the user of a function would need to know and 
specify every single time all the dependencies of a that function. It 
would be a lot more natural, if the dependencies would be tracked by the 
function itself, not by its users.

So I would like to reiterate my plea for decoupling the laziness and 
memoization - the users of "expensive" functions should use the 
appropriate lazy constructs, but it's the functions themselves that 
should take care of memoization.

See also http://bugzilla.metaprl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650 . One of the 
solutions proposed there (by Jason) is to allow .STATIC sections inside 
functions - something not currently supported.

Aleksey

-- 
Aleksey Nogin, Research Scientist
Advanced Technologies Department, Information & System Sciences Lab
HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, CA