[asdf-devel] Optional dependencies

[Faré]

Dear Tobias,

I personally think this "weakly-depends-on" is a horrible mess.

If you want FOO, require FOO. If you want FOO+READTABLE, require FOO+READTABLE.

And so have two systems FOO and FOO+READTABLE. I think that's what the
dwim.hu guys now do. It also works better with XCVB, this way.

> I'd think ASDF should include a ./configure step (there
> are extension for that kind of thing out there), and
> should then save configuration choices persistently,
> and check for these when loading a system.
>
I think this can be external to ASDF itself. At ITA, we have scripts
that do things like that. My, it's ugly. Trying to get rid of it.

[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
Mathematics is the Queen of Science but she isn't very Pure; she keeps
having babies by handsome young upstarts and various frog princes.
  — Donald Kingsbury (In "psychohistorical crisis", 2001)