[asdf-devel] :logical-hostname

[Robert Goldman]

On 3/30/10 Mar 30 -9:29 AM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:25 PM, Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.info
> <mailto:rpgoldman at sift.info>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     Question:  should we raise a style warning if the user supplies a
>     logical pathname that does not comply with the ANSI spec?  I would
>     prefer that we do that.
> 
> 
> The first question is whether we are going to provide a logical hostname
> or whether instead we will allow the user to provide a full logical
> pathname translation. That is
> 
> :logical-host "CL-PPCRE"
> 
> versus
> 
> :logical-path "CL-PPCRE:MY-DESIRED;SET;OF;VIRTUAL;DIRECTORIES;*.*.*"
> 
> The latter is trickier and proner to break. If we use the former we can
> provide two sets of translations

I agree.  In particular, I have vague memories of differences between
ACL and SBCL on how to handle the *.*.* versus *.*, but this is lost in
my neural network.

> 
> CL-PPCRE:FASL;*.*.* -> whatever binary directory
> CL-PPCRE:**;*.*.* -> source directory
> 
> So I would stay with that.
>  
> 
>     Question:  are we going to create a logical pathname translation for
>     just the system sources?  Or should we create also something like
> 
>     CL-PPCRE;FASLS;*.*.*
> 
>     in addition?  This seems a little tricky, since it requires that we hook
>     into the output name rewriting logic, but probably is The Right Thing.
> 
> 
> I agree, but again this can be done in a two-step process. First
> convince people that the logical hostname works and only then move to
> providing binary translations -- if that is ever needed, which might not
> be the case.

Minor suggestion:  for extensibility, uniformity, etc., would a variant
where we automagically create

CL-PPCRE:SRC;
and
CL-PPCRE:FASL;

be an acceptable choice?

I like this for orthogonality, and because I've always been a bit
unhappy using a logical pathname with just a device --- too reminiscent
of Windows' C:Foo!

Also, it seems like a cleaner path to allowing the user to extend the
logical pathnames for the system's host.

Not a big deal; just thought I would offer this as an early-stage
suggestion.

Best,
r