[asdf-devel] ASDF-USER ?

[Faré]

On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 7:20 PM, Stelian Ionescu <sionescu at cddr.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2013-01-26 at 19:12 -0500, Faré wrote:
>> I think the whole "temporary package" thing is a failure, and we
>
> What problems does it actually cause ?
>
It causes having to maintain this weird system,
having functions and classes the symbols of which become inaccessible, etc.
It causes users having the wrong expectations and/or having to learn
some magic semantics that do not apply to other cases.

If someone wants first class lexical namespaces for CL,
let them do it the right way. A half-assed "solution" special-cased to
.asd files.

It's not a major big deal, but one more cleanup I want to make on the
way to ASDF 3.

I appreciate Dan Barlow having made various experiments when he wrote ASDF;
some of the experiments were successes, other were failures.

Successes:
* User-extensible methods specialized on the dual operation and
component class hierarchy. Big big win.
* moving pathname management out of individual system files into asdf
itself. Big big win.
* Using TRUENAME to simplify .asd management with a link farm. Big win
at the time, though ultimately not scalable.
* Restarts :around compilation and loading (dunno if mk-defsystem did
that). Win.

Failures:
* not propagating timestamps at all (failure inherited from
mk-defsystem). Big fail.
* having some dependencies implicit via the clunky TRAVERSE algorithm
in general. Related fail, though still not worse than mk-defsystem.
* the run-shell-command dead-end (inherited from mk-defsystem).

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
        — Morpheus, in "The Matrix"