[asdf-devel] ASDF 1.501

[Robert Goldman]

On 2/1/10 Feb 1 -12:59 AM, Tobias C. Rittweiler wrote:
> Faré <fahree at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I've just released ASDF 1.501 in the official repository, now with all
>> the source registry configuration that I previously discussed. It's
>> currently documented in its own file README.source-registry, rather
>> than in the general manual asdf.texinfo, as it should be. Patch
>> welcome.
>>
>> Note that I bumped the version from 1.375 to 1.500 then 1.501. This to
>> indicate that we're not using CVS anymore, that I've reached a
>> milestone towards my goal of an "ASDF 2" that I could push as a
>> replacement to ASDF. It passes the tests with SBCL. But the tests
>> could be extended to do more.
> 
> Before bumping to 2.0 directly, I'd suggest to go through at least one
> phase of release candidate. The release candidate is pushed to vendors
> (hopefully they will adopt even though it's called release candidate),
> the difference is that all newly introduced APIs are marked as
> "Experimental" until the actual 2.0 release. So the API is time-tested
> for a few months.

The thing I would most like to see before the release of ASDF 2.0 is
closure on the question of how to achieve backwards compatibility.

Let's say that I want to provide a library with an ASDF system
definition that will work on both "Classic" ASDF and ASDF 2.0.  How do I
do this?

Should we add

:asdf2

to *features*?

Or should we add more special features to indicate particular new
capabilities, such as

:asdf-test-op-load-op-depend

so that I can do something like

:in-order-to ( #-asdf-test-op-load-op-depend (test-op load-op))

?

One approach would be to use asdf:*asdf-revision*, but since this is not
present in Classic ASDF, the idiom would become cumbersome:

(if (boundp (intern (symbol-name '#:*asdf-revision*) :asdf)
    ....
    ....)

yucky...

Of these, I think I favor the :asdf2, but I fear it, because it means
we'll end up with :asdf2.5, :asdf2.6, ... etc.  But that may be the best
we can come up with.

cheers,
r