[asdf-devel] source file encoding

[Faré]

On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 19:53, Douglas Crosher <dtc-asdf at scieneer.com> wrote:
>
> Let me given an example so we can all test your idea:
>
> 1. Library developer upgrades ASDF, and starts adding UTF-8 characters.
> Lets say the developer assumes a default of UTF-8 so does not
> add a declaration, which I think is your suggestion.  The library is
> intended to be portable.
>
No need to upgrade ASDF to use UTF-8. It's already working in most places.
A hundred different systems already use UTF-8 without any declaration.
It's mostly portable. Except when it's not.
Only when it's not do you want to recommend your users to upgrade ASDF.

> 2. Users download the library, but have not yet upgraded ASDF.  They start
> up an arbitrary CL implementation, which does not default to UTF-8.  The code
> may fail to compile, or may have incorrect characters.
>
That's the current situation already.

> I hope this can be accepted and that it is clear that library developers
> will need to wait until the user base has upgraded before add UTF-8 to
> portable libraries.
>
It can, and has, been accepted.

The answer to users for which it breaks is currently
"sucks to be you, good luck configuring your system".

The answer to users for which it breaks will instead be
"upgrade ASDF". And if that still fails, the answer will be
"Wow, I didn't know anyone still used CormanLisp, GCL, Genera, RMCL, or XCL.
Good luck adding UTF-8 support to it."

> This is why we need the external-format support in ASDF - to make this reliable.
>
Indeed. That, and to make it possible at all
to mix such UTF-8 libraries and decidedly non-UTF8 code and get desired results.

>> Library authors have *already* largely adopted UTF-8.
>> See previous analysis by Orivej Desh:
>>       "I did a ckeck of quicklisp systems.
>>         There are 263 lisp files in 107 systems which assume non-ASCII,
>>         and only 31 of them in 20 systems assume non-UTF-8"
>> That's out of 700 libraries in Quicklisp.
>> Only 9 have been found to be an actual problem, and two are fixed already.
>>       https://github.com/orivej/asdf-encodings/wiki/Tracking-non-UTF-8-lisp-files-in-Quicklisp

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