[asdf-devel] asdf and quicklisp

[Zach Beane]

Faré <fahree at gmail.com> writes:

> Dear Zach,
>
> I'm a bit concerned about quicklisp shipping with a very old version
> of ASDF.  Quicklisp says it depends on ASDF 2.011 or later in its
> *required-asdf-version*, but then you ship with 2.014.6 to load if the
> implementation's ASDF is too old.  Both 2.011 and 2.014.6 are antique
> by ASDF standards, and what more, being older than 2.015, have trouble
> with self-upgrade as part of loading other systems that depend on
> ASDF. Actually, the good version for self-upgrade is 2.014.8, but I'm
> rounding to the next stable release; which brings me to my next point:
> 2.014.6 is not just old, but it's not a supported release version (not
> that all release versions are stable; 2.015 had many issues; but the
> supported answer is always to upgrade to the next stable release).
>
> What is the policy for upgrading the ASDF in Quicklisp?  If it's not
> "never, ever", is it possible to upgrade your ASDF to something more
> recent?
>
> For instance, quicklisp contains asdf-encodings and xcvb which depend
> on asdf 2.21 for its :encoding feature, and asdf-finalizers which
> depends on asdf 2.23 for its :compile-check feature. Even without
> speaking of features, numerous implementation-specific fixes were
> committed since 2.014.6, and new implementations are supported.
>
> Why, of all CL software, is ASDF the only one never to be updated with
> Quicklisp?
>
> Is there anything I can do to make things more comfortable for you
> with respect to upgrading ASDF?

I stopped updating ASDF versions when it seemed to require asdf-ecl.lisp
to work on ECL. Is the case? Can ECL get by with asdf.lisp alone?

Quicklisp is geared towards providing libraries ("systems"), and I see
ASDF is an application for loading systems, not a library. It has a
parallel and separate system for updates in Quicklisp. I have put time
and effort into making it possible to "downgrade" library sets with
Quicklisp, providing an escape hatch for harmful changes to libraries,
there is no easy mechanism for ASDF. (There's also no easy mechanism for
Quicklisp itself, but I am not too troubled by that since I can make
quick updates to Quicklisp directly if needed.)

I'm up for upgrading the provided version to a more recent ASDF if it is
still a single file on all implementations and if it doesn't cause any
major compatibility problems. Of course, those always seem to crop up
after things have been pushed into wide use, not during testing.

Jumping on a frequent upgrade cycle for ASDF does not excite me,
though.

Zach