[asdf-devel] patch system-source-file

[Robert Goldman]

Greg Pfeil wrote:
> Here are a couple changes to ASDF that I made in the process of creating
> an ASDF browser for CCL's IDE:
> 
> • system-source-file now works for systems without their own .asd
> • optional parts of systems (version, maintainer, etc.) don't leave
> their slots unbound

The first of these looks good, but I'm less fond of the second change.
I've been bitten repeatedly by bugs caused by initforms that caused
slots not explicitly set to have some value that hides a mistaken
failure to fill the slot.

I'd rather have us handle slot-unbound on those optional parts of the
system instead of stuffing a bunch of NILs in there.

If one is expecting strings here one must still handle checking for NIL,
so having to check for slot-boundp doesn't seem that much more onerous.

On a related topic, I'd be inclined, more for documentation than
efficiency, to stick :type string on a bunch of these.  Of course, if
I'm wrong about the above, this would have to be (or null string)....

best,
R