[asdf-devel] ASDF traverse changed behavior?

[james anderson]

good morning;

On 2010-03-17, at 14:12 , Robert Goldman wrote:

> On 3/17/10 Mar 17 -4:04 AM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll wrote:
>> This brings back one of the things I discussed long ago. TRAVERSE's
>> behavior has to be documented and its behavior has to be specified  
>> and
>> fixed. Either that or ASDF should stabilize a way to write  
>> extensions on
>> top of it. I can not be hanging out there waiting for every  
>> improvement
>> in ASDF to break our build system.
>>
>> Incidentally, another thing that breaks ECL is that INPUT-FILES  
>> now has
>> a default method with signature ((o operation) ...) That broke our
>> default methods with signature ((o T) (c compiled-file))
>
> With all due respect, I think taking over primary methods for ANY  
> of the
> existing ASDF generic functions and classes should be proclaimed to be
> out of bounds for extenders.
>
> I propose that we modify the manual (if I can figure out where! the
> chapter on the object model is a real mess) to specify that extenders
> should only define primary methods on classes they define themselves.
> Otherwise the ASDF maintainers reserve the right to make arbitrary  
> changes.
>
> Modifications to generic functions --- even generic functions whose
> names are exported --- for classes --- even classes whose names are
> exported --- should be limited to :around, :before and :after method
> definitions.
>
> If this proposal meets with approval, we should try to figure out  
> where
> it can live in the manual.

one would be within reason to adopt the same constraints as the  
language standard: only the library itself is permitted to define  
methods (whether primary, or qualified) exclusively on "standard"  
classes.
11.1.2.1.2 #19 is very stingy, but it maintains a clear interface.