[Asdf-devel] Program with metaclass on MKCL.

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

"D. Martinez" <denis.martinez at live.com> writes:

> Thank you Pascal for pointing this out, but I don't think this relates to my problem.
> I have looked at MKCL source and it was evident that it does not
> implement superclass validation at this time.
> Its MOP is not supported either in Closer-MOP so I assume it is somewhat young.
> Quoting for clos/standard.lsp:
>   ;; FIXME!!! Here should come the invocation of VALIDATE-SUPERCLASS!
> As I have played with various CLs I noted that some required
> VALIDATE-SUPERCLASS and some did not. I have not really checked what
> is the standard's stance on this.
>  
> I can trace the error rising from defclass to standard.lsp in mkcl.
> It is the cond clause from ensure-class-using-class. I display some more information to post here.
>           ((not (eq (class-of class) metaclass))
>            (format *error-output* "class: ~A~%" class)
>            (format *error-output* "(class-of class): ~A~%" (class-of class))
>            (format *error-output* "metaclass: ~A~%" metaclass)
>            (error "When redefining a class, the metaclass can not change.")))
>  
> Which provides this output
>  
> class: &<The A-CLASS A 140012460512096>
> (class-of class): &<The STANDARD-CLASS A-CLASS 140012464325568>
> metaclass: &<The STANDARD-CLASS A-CLASS 140012460537344>
> Error during command line arguments processing:
> When redefining a class, the metaclass can not change..
>  
> This does show that A-CLASS is intanciated twice, and it is why the EQ test fails.
> The mystery is why there happen two instanciations when I use ASDF.

An explaination could be that MKCL uses the same environment for 
compilation and loading, and that ASDF does both COMPILE-FILE and LOAD
(when the file is not already compiled).


A compiler doesn't have to define the class completely when compiling; it
only has to do the following:

    If a defclass form appears as a top level form, the compiler must
    make the class name be recognized as a valid type name in subsequent
    declarations (as for deftype) and be recognized as a valid class
    name for defmethod parameter specializers and for use as the
    :metaclass option of a subsequent defclass.  The compiler must make
    the class definition available to be returned by find-class when its
    environment argument is a value received as the environment
    parameter of a macro.


You could test and compare:

  1.1- remove the fasl files.
  1.2- from a fresh image, (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-source-op :hello)
       this only LOAD the source file (situation :execute)

  2.1- remove the fasl files (if any)
  2.2- from a fresh image, (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op        :hello)
       this uses COMPILE-FILE and LOAD (situations :compile-toplevel and :load-toplevel)

  3.1- keep the fasl files from the previous compilation.
  3.2- from a fresh image, (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op        :hello)
       this should only LOAD the fasl file (situation :load-toplevel)



-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
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