[asdf-devel] Should ASDF define many packages?

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 9:04 PM, Faré <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:

> The question is whether we should avoid creating extra packages, and
> instead export all relevant functions from ASDF, or should we keep
> those separate packages ASDF-BOOTSTRAP and ASDF-UTILITIES.
>

I think the too-many-packages problem is not worth wasting time. I would
rather be interested on a _simpler_ bootstrapping process, which can be used
by implementations shipping ASDF. I mean, given that ASDF is not loaded,
being able to skip all the code related to clever renaming of packages,
interning / uninterning symbols, etc.


> Does anyone of you use functions from ASDF-UTILITIES? Does any of you
> :use ASDF-UTILITIES?
>

Not that I am aware of.


> PS: we're at ASDF 2.005 (=2.120), and considering the sudden surge of
> bugs that led to 2.121, there will be a 2.006 soon. Sigh.
>

On reading your replies to the bug report, I appreciate you do not find it
essential that implementations ship the latest version of ASDF, or that at
least users should not rely on it.

Nevertheless, I believe it would be interesting to rescue the idea of
issuing periodic announcements of milestone releases that implementations
should include. Not as verbose as the ASDF2 letter, but at least one email
pointing out: hey, include this.

Alternatively, I would contemplate the possibility of including a
configuration step in ECL that downloads the latest ASDF. That would be
easy, just looking for the existence of internet connection + wget/curl, but
we would need a stable and permanent address for ASDF files to be
downloaded. I mean individual files, not really a tarball.

Juanjo

-- 
Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com
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