Maven and ABCL

[Mark Evenson]

On 4/8/17 01:15, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
> Hi Robert,
> 
> If you are familiar with the architecture, perhaps you can give me some
> hints where to intervene. The behavior I want is:
> 
> Assume I load a system at top-level and sprinkled in it or its dependencies
> there are a number of :mvn-modules as described earlier.
> During preparation, the dependencies, exclusions, and managed-dependencies
> are collected at the level of the top-level system.
> Then, before any lisp or other files are loaded a single call is made to
> compute the combined maven dependencies and they are resolved and added to
> the classpath.
> Finally the rest of the load goes as it usually does, although the
> :mvn-module components compile and loads are no-ops since their work has
> already been done up-front.

The architecture of ASDF can be likened to that of the [ship of
Theseus][1], being replaced as it sails the seas of compatibility;
Robert is just the latest in the line of captains who have attempted to
navigate its passage.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

It was suggested at [ELS 2017][2], that while ASDF has a firm
abstraction at the upper level in the CLOS abstraction and a recently
concertized cross-implementation compatibility layer in UIOP, it may be
said to be missing large swathes of reusable abstraction to bridge the two.

[2]:  urn:"Loading Multiple Versions of an ASDF System in the Same Lisp
Image"/"10th European Lisp Symposium Session: Session I:
Tools"/"Vsevolod Domkin".

I think the first step forward will be recognizing that the current
[ABCL-ASDF:RESOLVE][3] machinery works on an "internal state", opaque to
ASDF for resolution.  What is needed is to somehow explicitly return all
the dependencies in a format that the properly overloaded ASDF CLOS
machinery can understand.

[3]:
https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/abcl/abcl/blob/master/contrib/abcl-asdf/abcl-asdf.lisp

-- 
"A screaming comes across the sky.  It has happened before, but there
is nothing to compare to it now."