[asdf-devel] Alternate default lisp system location

Attila Lendvai attila.lendvai at gmail.com
Thu Mar 13 07:34:08 UTC 2014


> I *do* get the objection that Pascal had, and I absolutely agree that we
> should not choose a directory name that will collide with existing
> users' directories.


when reading this i imagined my future child some decades down the road
reading the ASDF manual (hopefull only for historical reasons while
reifying CL semantics to have an environment where he can try his
father's code)... and then pondering: what on earth made someone chose
this weird ~/asdf-local-projects/ name instead of e.g. ~/common-lisp/
:)

IOW, i'd like to draw more attentinon to the fact that what we are
weighting here is a few active complaints today from experts (who are
already aware of this issue reading the mailing list, even before the
change itself)... against all the yet to be born/educated CL
programmers until the time when ASDF is eventually obsoleted (or for
that matter CL altogether), and all the aggregate time these future
people will waste reading manuals and asking questions.

i think a tendency towards not taking this into consideration has a
lot to do why the CL community is not successful. the defaults of
slime is another very good example of this, although it got much
better since the times when i first climbed the CL/Emacs fence.

also note: as Fare already pointed out, if e.g. XCVB gains more
traction, then some/most systems will have two system definition
files, but all sitting under the asdf specific ~/asdf-local-projects/
name.

but hopefully by the time my children are old enough for programming
computing systems will have finally obsoleted this silly idea that the
base axioms for data storage is labeled binary numbers, and their
labels organized into a tree... and with that rendering this whole
question moot. hopefully...

sorry for the sentiments.

-- 
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“Disregard for the preferences and interests of individuals alive
today in order to pursue some distant social goal that their rulers
have claimed is their duty to promote has been a common cause of
misery for people throughout the ages.”
	— Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997)



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