[alexandria-devel] Maintenance

[szergling]

On 3/2/10, Tobias C. Rittweiler <tcr at freebits.de> wrote:
> Hi folks!
>
> I had this idea to ask implementators how they'd feel inclined about
> including Alexandria as part of their implementations as most
> nowadays do with ASDF.

Some thoughts from a relative beginner :)

I have settled upon Alexandria as my default utilities library, so I'm
a happy user.

To begin with, I consider myself relatively naive about module
systems. However, I think the current arrangement is (while non-ideal)
almost acceptable. Why don't we wait for an effective module and
"installer" system (I have faith that the day will come)? In the
meantime, asdf-install, cl-build, the "libraries" projects, or
tarballs (ok...maybe not?), among many other ways, has been sufficient
for me.

I often reflexively avoid bundled libraries. In my experience, the
problem with implementation bundled libraries is that they are often
not complete enough -- older library versions, no version control,
problems with stale fasls or confused versions when I upgrade
manually, so there's no obvious way to upgrade or to hack on the
bundled libraries.

This may be made worse if you run multiple implementations - they will
have separate (possibly incompatible) copies of libraries, managed in
different ways. Compatibility issues are not common, but not so rare
either. So every time there's a problem, my preference (though I don't
quite get there) has been to use only one "main branch" of each
library on my whole pc, shared by all Lisp implementations &
implementation versions. I do use (have used) boxsets grudgingly :(

> For that to work, of course, there has to be Alexandria releases,
> and once something's officially released, backwards-compatiblity
> would have to be preserved. (I think there should be an official
> ALEXANDRIA package containing the stable API, and some -TESTBED or
> -BETA package with stuff being in flux, but for people to try out
> who are so inclined. Together with some ALEXANDRIA-VERSION<= stuff
> for conditionalization.)
>
> I'd offer to step up, polish the existing code base, write tests
> where needed, write documentation, do releases, and try to push the
> things down the implementations. I'd hope that the quality of my
> existing libraries speak for how severe I take all these steps to
> produce well-rounded releases.
>
> Nowadays, it's my impression that the only somewhat active people
> are Nikodemus and Attila, where Nikodemus seems to hold the power of
> ultimate decision making.
>
> There are probably more who feel strongly about Alexandria so I
> wanted to ask you first, because it'd mean a shift of responsibility
> and power.
>
> What do you think?

As a user, I welcome any extra love for Alexandria :)

Yong.