[asdf-devel] ASDF features under discussion

[Daniel Herring]

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009, Robert Goldman wrote:
> Daniel Herring wrote:
>> On Mon, 21 Sep 2009, Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
>>> 2009/8/19 Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll <juanjose.garciaripoll at googlemail.com>:
>>>
>>>> First the question. What is the level of integration of ASDF with
>>>> different implementations? Does ASDF support all lisp implementations
>>>> equally? Does SBCL (and perhaps other) ship the latest versions of
>>>> ASDF?
>>> (Sorry for the late answer.) SBCL ships with a periodically updated
>>> upstream ASDF.
>>>
>>> That is, it might not be the latest bleeding-edge one for each
>>> release, but the intention is that the one SBCL comes with contains no
>>> modifications. Historically this has not always been true, I think,
>>> but it has been the intention.
>>
>> IMO, ASDF should be augmented with (stable) hooks into REQUIRE for all
>> capable lisps.  It should similarly try to handle all reasonable
>> variations required by implementations.
>
> What do you mean by the above exactly?  That (require 'asdf) should work
> everywhere?  Or do you mean that (require 'foo) should try to asdf-load
> foo everywhere?  The latter seems more controversial, since
> implementations may have already decided they want to do something else
> with require and provide.

My view is that, if an implementation provides a supported hook to augment 
REQUIRE, then ASDF should take advantage of that hook.  Otherwise, ASDF's 
users are left passing these around on the black market.

People who really don't want that behavior could (push 
:disable-asdf-require-hook *features*) before loading ASDF...

- Daniel