[asdf-devel] compile-with-nicknames

[Faré]

2011/10/17 Gábor Balázs <gabalz at gmail.com>:
> I think the divergence is coming from the fact that I want a special
> functionality (package renaming) with a simple syntax and you want a general
> functionality which cannot be represented by a simple syntax. So it is a
> tradeoff between simple syntax and general functionality.
>
No. I want to keep asdf.lisp minimal, yet provide hooks for other people
to write extensions that do what they need to do without making it a mess.

I am also writing those hooks with knowledge of how things are done or
can be done in xcvb, which I believe follows a saner computation model,
and which I hope will replace asdf someday.

An around-compile hook is general enough that
1- you can implement whatever you want on top
2- it encourages a sane approach to controlling compilation

Yet
3- it couldn't be done cleanly without a hook inside asdf.lisp.

Indeed, you could have your own cl-source-file subclass and override perform,
but you'd have to either copy/paste code from the default perform method,
or lose the functionality and experience bitrot when it changes.
Or you could try an :around method around perform, but you wouldn't be able
to filter the results of compile-file based on e.g. a check of whether
compile-time side-effects verified some invariant of yours
(see what I mean with fare-utils/molicle/).
Or you could try to bind *compile-op-compile-file-function*,
but systems that do that would interfere badly with each other,
and possibly with lower-level settings from e.g. ECL.

> As package renaming is already available in a "complex" way, providing
> another complex way won't improve on its popularity. If it would be possible
> just with a few more characters in an asd file, people might use it.
> Otherwise if they have to create different functions, classes in separate
> files for that, they just keep providing nicknames...
>
I invite you to write a asdf-package-renaming extension to asdf,
that does what you need, by defining your own cl-source-file extension
and/or (preferrably) by using this new around-compile mechanism.
Note: if you use the :around-compile facility, you might want to
include in your defsystem a :depends-on ((:version :asdf "2.017.18")).

> But I am wondering how an asd file would look like with your scenario. Can
> you provide an example?
>
See the test .asd file in the attached patch.
Instead of binding the *read-base* it could call a function
that uses unwind-protect to locally rename packages.

> Btw, I imagine before/after implemented in a setup/cleanup style, so if
> compilation fails, cleanup (after) still runs. So it is wrapped in an
> unwind-protect.
> So the before/after is nothing to do with generic functions in my view. It
> is just a wrapping around COMPILE-FILE.
>
Therefore, you need an :around function anyway.
Then why not expose the complete functionality?

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well — Donald Hebb
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