[asdf-devel] MCL issue

[Pascal Costanza]

On 19 May 2011, at 22:13, Robert Goldman wrote:

> On 5/19/11 May 19 -2:57 PM, Faré wrote:
>>>> : Pascal Costanza
>>>> Because ASDF 2.x caused me some trouble in RMCL, I actually put some effort
>>>> into learning logical pathnames - and they seem to work extremely well,
>>>> as far as I can tell
>>>> 
>> Beware logical pathnames. They may "work extremely well" in some
>> implementations, and completely differently in some other — or be
>> absent or not well supported. In other words, they are not portable,
>> not enough the extremely constrained subset that is defined as
>> portable in the spec. That's the main reason why ASDF2, while it will
>> let you use them, isn't based on them.
>> 
>> If you want to start on a crusade to the spec to be extended to be
>> more useful and/or to get all Lisp implementations to actually use
>> such a spec — I'm sure many CL users will love you (especially
>> janderson!). Good luck.
>> 
>>>> (but it requires
>>>> specifying :ignore-inherited-configuration in
>>>> my source registry configuration, which seems somewhat unclean to me - but I
>>>> don't really know...)
>>>> 
>> Why do you have to :ignore-inherited-configuration ???
>> Is there or was there something buggy in ASDF2?
>> Why didn't you report the bug and get it fixed?
>> 
>>> : Robert Goldman
>>> One undesirable feature is their refusal to permit filenames containing
>>> underscores or spaces:
>>> 
>>> word---one or more uppercase letters, digits, and hyphens.
>>> 
>> And SBCL, being the language lawyering prick we love it to be,
>> does enforce these limitations like all those it can from the standard.
>> Of course, Corman doesn't have portable pathnames, I wouldn't trust GCL,
>> and there might be bugs in ABCL, etc.
> 
> Whereas ACL being the commercial, we don't please the customer by
> nagging him, easygoing dude that he is, lets me write very useful (to
> me) logical pathname definitions that then blow up spectacularly when
> the language lawyer SBCL gets her hands on them....
> 
> If you use multiple lisp implementations, I'm now convinced that using
> logical pathnames is tantamount to taking a big pile of hours, putting
> them in an ashtray, and setting fire to them.

I tried to use the mechanism promoted by ASDF. It worked in 7 out of 8 Common Lisp implementations that I have checked. Unfortunately, it didn't work in the eighth one at all, no matter what I tried. This has cost me quite some time that was eventually wasted.

I then invested the time to learn logical pathnames, and came up with a solution that works in 8 out of 8 Common Lisp implementations. So my experience is exactly the opposite of yours.

I'm just the messenger. I don't understand why I get attacked for delivering the message.

Pascal

--
Pascal Costanza
The views expressed in this email are my own, and not those of my employer.