[asdf-devel] Last call before code freeze

[Robert Goldman]

On 4/29/10 Apr 29 -3:59 PM, Faré wrote:
>>>> : 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.

It's not a blocker to not have good system-dependencies, as Daniel says.
 But given that, I think the blocker is that we should rip out the
system-dependencies misfeature.  It's not right yet, so we shouldn't
ship it, and encourage people to use it.

I.e., missing new features ==  not a blocker.  busted new features ==
blocker.

ASDF is already hobbled by too many things that are almost right and
that we have to maintain backwards compatibility for.  Please let us not
install another one...

> 
> 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).

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Versions are CRITICAL.  Even in the half-baked implementation we have,
they are HUGELY valuable for developers.

They could avert vast quantities of pain using ASDF-INSTALL, if people
actually USED them.

dpkg would be totally useless for people working from source code
repositories.

I promise you, if you took versions out, I would go back to logical
pathnames and load-paths.
> 
> 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.

I think James' objections are right -- it doesn't correctly interact
with packaging, etc.  Let's hold off until we get it right.  Especially
since it introduces a new double-processing of the defsystem form.  If
we decide later on that this is a mistake, it will be really hard to do
away with it.

best,

r