I have been stuck on KLOS because TinyCLOS’s initialization protocol is different from Dylan’s and I got snarled up in the handling of keywords and initargs.
I did some reading last night and here are my notes.
The initialization protocol for Dylan is actually documented in the DRM.
Basically this needs to be implemented:
The default make method allocates an instance and initializes all the slots for which it can provide values, as follows:
If the slot is keyword initializable and its keyword is present in the defaulted initialization arguments, then the slot is initialized from the defaulted initialization arguments.
If the slot is not initialized by a keyword but has an init specification, it is initialized from the init specification.
In either case, an error of type
is signaled if the value is not of the type declared for the slot. Regardless of the source, the initial value is stored into the slot using an unspecified built-in mechanism. In particular, the setter generic function is not called to store the value into the slot.
I found some of the old implementation in Common Lisp here.
There was an attempt of a Dylan Scheme system called IDyl, this is how it handles initargs.