[asdf-devel] :logical-hostname

[james anderson]

On 2010-03-30, at 01:42 , Faré wrote:

> One site per system looks like it will quickly pollute the host
> namespace.

It depends on the use-case, as that determines the granularity one  
needs when re-mapping.
While one could arrange the host mapping to each system  
independently, that would require machinery in addition to the  
standard logical pathname operators.
I tend to work with a host for all libraries and one each for  
applications.

> What about we instead use a single logical host with
> subdirectories?
>
> #P"COMMON-LISP:SYSTEMS;CL-PPCRE;CL-PPCRE.ASD"

In my case, that works out to

   #P"LIBRARY:de;weitz;cl-ppcre;cl-ppcre.asd"

which is easy to accomplish when all sources are in one tree.

>
> The problem I have with this approach with logical pathnames at all is
> that I don't understand whether or not mixed case and other characters
> are allowed at all.

I do not recall that the pathname tests revealed any inconsistency  
among implementations which, in itself, would argue against their  
wider use.

> They clearly aren't portably printable if they're
> allowed, but I suppose that's an OK limitation. In any case, if
> logical pathnames with names including mixed cases, dots, dashes and
> underscores are not allowed at all, or there's at least one supported
> implementation that will bork, I think it's a non-starter.

dashes are allowed.
underscores and dots are not handled consistently as they are not  
valid word constituents.

the syntax restriction does mean that a project with non-conformant  
file names could not use such a feature were it to be added, but  
nothing in the suggestion implied that the argument would be required.

>
> On the other hand, maybe it's time to have make an amendment to the CL
> standard that will make LOGICAL-PATHNAMEs usable at long last.