[asdf-devel] Is this necessary in this form? Re: ASDF 1.501

[james anderson]

good morning;

Are these additions necessary? In this form?
I had wanted to propose a patch to one method and thought it  
appropriate to update before offering the diff for review.
I now have 1.502 and observe, that `asdf.lisp`, which had 56,684 as  
of a version ca 2009-06-17 (it has a $Format version only), has grown  
through 87,098, to 98,665 through version 1.374 to 1.502. This is not  
a little.

I understand that for some use-cases binary locations are thought to  
be indispensable.
I have read the lauchpad bug descriptions and the livejournal essay,  
but remain unconvinced that the suggested additions are a good idea.

Is it necessary to double to size to include - as an 'all-or-nothing'  
version, functions which are not strictly necessary? I never had a  
good feeling about a configuration system which introduced itself to  
the world with the conclusion "Hence, all in one file", and am ever  
less convinced that it needs to be that way. There is something not  
quite right about adding a configuration system to a configuration  
system for a dynamic, introspective language. It's not a meta- 
circular matter here, just getting namespaces straight and  
bootstrapping. I offer for discussion an alternative[1], which  
appends to asdf.lisp an operator which bootstraps the system. Just  
because asdf system manipulation operators are insufficiently  
documented and inscrutable in their effects, does not mean they need  
be re-implemented in another model/namespace. There is also a patch  
to make absolute module locations work, because that is how I express  
my additions to the `asdf.asd` file, and one to (maybe) add mcl to  
the binary locations, but they are not central to this issue.

The additions referenced in the `.asd` delta are also up there[2].  
One of them an extension to support hierarchical system names. The  
other implements contingent dependency. Their directory also includes  
mechanisms to generate and graph system definitions from a live  
image, but I'll need to prepare more stuff for public consumption  
before they're useful and - at least for the moment, they're limited  
to mcl/ccl.

Your thoughts?

-------
[1]: http://github.com/lisp/net.comon-lisp.asdf
[2]: http://github.com/lisp/de.setf.utility

On 2010-01-27, at 07:50 , Faré wrote:

> 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.
>
> Next, comes a similar revamp of ASDF-BINARY-LOCATIONS configuration.
> Or maybe a wholesale replacement of ABL with something that's simpler
> and configured in a way similar to source-registry? What do YOU think?
>
> [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http:// 
> fare.tunes.org ]
> "If men are good, you don't need government; if men are evil or  
> ambivalent,
> you don't dare have one." — Robert LeFevre
>
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