[asdf-devel] standard io syntax woes

[Faré]

For the record, checking on my machine today:

Implementations that make the standard readtable read-only:
allegro sbcl
Implementations that don't:
abcl ccl clisp cmucl ecl lispworks scl

Implementations that make the standard pprint-dispatch table read-only:
ccl sbcl
Implementations that don't:
abcl allegro clisp cmucl ecl lispworks scl

I don't know if a CDR is needed to change that, but I'm going to bug
all the respective vendors. It's just a safety issue wrt the existing
standard.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. — Carl Jung


On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Pascal Costanza <pc at p-cos.net> wrote:
> You could specify an extension to Common Lisp that allows users to request read-only readtables, submit this as a CDR, and hope that CL implementations are willing to implement such an extension of the language, and then rely on that.
>
> Pascal
>
> On 20 Feb 2013, at 22:44, Faré <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In 2.29.9, I pushed a change whereby ASDF keeps passing around whichever value
>> the two syntax tables are globally bound to, leaving on the user the
>> onus to not mutate
>> them in too destructive a way, yet without precluding a change.
>>
>> Allocation is for (copy-readtable nil) and (copy-pprint-dispatch nil) is
>> 1648 and 2192 bytes respectively on CCL 1.9 x86-64, and
>> more like 5300 and 10300 bytes on SBCL 1.1.3 x86-64.
>> rme suggests that 15KiB per .asd file is no big deal and we should
>> just bite the bullet.
>>
>> Others suggest that we should let users fail and keep out of the business
>> of binding syntax variables altogether. I'd agree if I didn't want to
>> eventually move
>> towards "pure" .asd files in a restricted standardized syntax as per
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/asdf/+bug/541562
>>
>> If only Common Lisp allowed to portably specify read-only tables,
>> I would just use that, and let users fail when they try to mutate them.
>> Unhappily, it doesn't, and therefore when some user mutates a global table,
>> it will end up causing pain for another user, not himself.
>> Or I could rely on SBCL being used a whole lot and indeed having
>> immutable such default syntax tables with understandable messages
>> to blame whoever tries to mutate those tables without rebinding them first,
>> and push for all implementations to similarly make them read-only.
>>
>> The jury is still out. Please voice your opinion.
>>
>> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
>> Statism is the secular version of salvation through faith: it doesn't
>> matter what bureaucrats do, only that they do it with good intentions.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Faré <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Dear Common Lisp hackers,
>>>
>>> Inspecting with Anton Vodonosov the latest batch of cl-test-grid issues
>>> when running with asdf 2.29.x, we found an interesting case
>>> that mirrors the previous failure of iolib 0.7.3 with 2.29.
>>>
>>> In the hope of making the semantics of asd files more deterministic,
>>> with an eye on eventually making .asd files a strict subset of Lisp,
>>> I had put in 2.27 a with-standard-io-syntax around the loading of a .asd file.
>>> However, this is specified to bind *readtable* and *print-pprint-dispatch*
>>> to standard tables that are notionally read-only,
>>> though this immutability is NOT enforced on most implementations,
>>> instead there being unspecified bad consequences if you do mutate.
>>>
>>> So, I could conceivably (copy-readtable nil) and (copy-pprint-dispatch nil)
>>> every time, but that could be expensive on some implementations.
>>> Or I could say "it's the programmer's responsibility to ensure a proper
>>> table has been setup before he modifies it",
>>> but that would be harsh and a notable backward incompatibility
>>> (and there's no equivalent of named-readtables for pprint-dispatch).
>>> Or I could preserve the current semantics of a global table
>>> that everyone modifies causing "interesting" issues, by rebinding
>>> *print-pprint-dispatch* as well as *readtable* within the w-s-i-s,
>>> only ensuring that the other syntax variables are standard.
>>> Or I could remove the with-standard-io-syntax altogether, and say
>>> "yes, if you're doing any global modification, you suck and you're
>>> going to break something for someone, but that's none of my business".
>>>
>>> Anton leans for the latter.
>>>
>>> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
>>> One can be so anxious to put his "best foot forward" that he doesn't even
>>> notice that it isn't his own foot. — Harry Browne (HIFFIAUW)
>>
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>
> --
> Pascal Costanza
>
>
>