[asdf-devel] Last call before code freeze

[Faré]

>>>: rpg
>>: dherring
>: rpg

>>> Do we have the system dependencies right yet?
>>
>> Probably not.  However, I don't see that as a regression, nor has it
>> prevented ASDF from gaining dominance.  Thus it can probably wait until
>> after the ASDF 2 release.  No?
>
> You are half right.
>
> You are right that the absence of system-dependencies didn't hurt ASDF 1.
>
> But that's not the situation now.  At this point system-dependencies are
> in ASDF 2.  I'm arguing that if we don't have them right yet, we should
> rip them out.
>
> The regression vis a vis ASDF 1 is introducing a new feature that we
> know to be broken, not being missing a feature.
>
> James pointed out before that this was busted and I didn't realize it
> until I used it.  So a tip of the "I told you so" hat to James.
>
> In other words, Daniel, we are agreeing about the principle of the
> thing, but are not on the same page about the status of the ASDF 2 code
> base.
>
While I sympathize with the remarks by rpg,
I still think this is not a blocker.

1- we mostly don't properly support versions anyway, and we claim that
 our system dependencies fix that particular issue. They fix a lot of
 other issues. Personally, I'd ditch the whole version thing, to be
 handled by some tool outside the base ASDF itself (say, dpkg).

2- in the future, we could support extracting versions from a file -
 supply a pathname or a sexp specifying what file to extract the version
 and how.

3- the system dependencies mechanism is already much better than what's
 in ASDF 1, and I think we should keep it. That said, I would yield to
 a strong opposition to it.

[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always
the kind whose ideas are idiotic.  — H. L. Mencken