[asdf-devel] Replace *DEFAULT-PATHNAME-DEFAULTS*

[Thomas M. Hermann]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.info> wrote:

> I think that this change may be annoying to Unix[1] *users* who start up
> their lisp from the shell, and who have expectations about how their
> lisp implementation is going to set the *default-pathname-defaults* from
> the current working directory.
>
> This change would not break any systems, but it would break some users'
> conventional usage patterns.  I don't see that any benefit is provided
> that would compensate for that.  And I don't see that there is a
> problem:  this only kicks in when people have failed to provide a usable
> path to their systems.  For some people, with some usage patterns and
> some choice of implementation, the current behavior will provide a
> desirable outcome.  For others, they are no worse off (so ASDF looks
> someplace stupid where there will be no .asd files, consuming some
> minimal amount of cycles in an error case).
>
> Furthermore, vendors/implementors for whom *default-pathname-defaults*
> will not be usefully set, may feel free to define appropriate behaviors.
>
> So I'm not convinced that ASDF is broke, and request that we not fix it.
>
> Best,
> r
>
>
> [1] by this I mean the broadest sense of the word, to cover Linux, the
> BSD family, and Mac OS X.
>
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>

Robert,

I'm not arguing that ASDF is broken, rather that the default behavior is not
explicitly defined. The benefit I envision is defined behavior versus
implementation dependent behavior. I acknowledge that the benefit may not
justify the change. If the concern is for users that rely on
*DEFAULT-PATHNAME-DEFAULTS*, though, I think the internals can be modified
to result in defined behavior while still respecting the value of
*DEFAULT-PATHNAME-DEFAULTS* when it is defined. I think the change can be
made in a way that is transparent to the users.

I don't really think of this as a bug and probably should have brought it up
here before entering it in launchpad. I'm really just interested in bringing
it up to discuss and getting feedback. I have a local git branch of ASDF
that I work from and will develop my ideas there. I installed VirtualBox and
will work on testing it on Linux as well.

Thanks,

~ Tom
----------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas M. Hermann
Odonata Research LLC
http://www.odonata-research.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasmhermann
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