[asdf-devel] [RfC] default value for *central-registry*

[Faré]

2009/9/23 james anderson <james.anderson at setf.de>:
> On 2009-09-24, at 00:06 , Tobias C. Rittweiler wrote:
>> james anderson writes:
>>> On 2009-09-23, at 22:03 , Faré wrote:
>>>
>>>> What about an ASDF_PATH shell variable to be taken from getenv the
>>>> first time an asdf:operate is called? (which raises questions as to
>>>> how to reset it when you dump an image)
>>>
>>> one way to accomplish that is to use logical hosts which the system
>>> remaps when it loads.
>>
>> Hah! Suggesting logical pathnames as a solution to Fare is quite
>> amusing. :-)
>
> i would be surprised, if he didn't see it coming.

Well, I'll be glad if logical pathnames are somehow fixed or made
portable, then relied upon by ASDF (the opposite order would disturb
me though). I invite janderson to draft an amendment to the CLHS that
would make logical pathnames useful, and to get a sign off of it by
all major CL implementers (SBCL implementers probably being the last
on the boat). With a little bit of luck, they will all be eager to
agree to that. I'd even like to see this endeavor succeed, though it
is not a battle I am ready to fight personally.

But in any case, my proposal at hand is not about how things look like
inside the Lisp process, but about a possible interprocess protocol
for specifying one or many PATHs that ASDF would lookup, recursively
or not, according to an environment variable.

There are such things as
PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH
PERL_PATH
PYTHONPATH
PLTCOLLECTS
TEXINPUTS
etc.

What about a ASDF_PATH, or better, a COMMON_LISP_PATH ? Hopefully the
latter, with a semantics that can be shared between ASDF and XCVB, and
that allows recursion through directories instead of or in addition to
having everything in one directory with symlinks.

[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
  It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool,
            than to open it and remove all doubt.