You can't eval each top-level form in compile-time. They may have side-effects, may expect user inputs, and may terminate in weeks(for example, a program doing ray-tracing or nuclear-explosion simulation).
Explicitely distinguish expand-time and run-time is necessary for real static compilation. If you don't want to distinguish them, you are inevitably forced to do compilation in run-time.
> You can't eval each top-level form in compile-time. They may have side-effects, may expect user inputs, and may terminate in weeks(for example, a program doing ray-tracing or nuclear-explosion simulation).
And you're compiling (not executing) a top-level form that does those things?
All right then - make the limitation that macros must be defined in their own top-level forms, and if a top-level form ever contains 'mac in a function position, or (annotate 'mac ...), then it's executed and any macros it assigns to globals are treated as such: macros. If it terminates in weeks, too bad.
Alternatively just write an interpreted REPL and include the ability to compile code, but not include macros in compilation - macros must be loaded into the REPL, then the actual runnable code is compiled (and the compiled code's macros are ignored).
