maintaining non-Lisp systems with ASDF

[Robert Dodier]

Hi, I am exploring the possibility of using ASDF to define systems of
non-Lisp code, specifically for Maxima (http://maxima.sourceforge.net).
Maxima is written in Lisp but has its own language. I'd like to
be able to load programs written in Maxima's language and/or
Lisp.

It seems like ASDF should be suitable if I can just replace calls to
COMPILE-FILE with Maxima's compile_file, and replace LOAD with
Maxima's load. After looking over the 3.1.5 source code, it seems
like one could clobber COMPILE-FILE* and LOAD* with Maxima-specific
versions. That seems suboptimal, since it would be helpful to have
the original versions of those functions for loading Lisp files.

Can someone give some advice about how to go about adapting
ASDF to Maxima? Have there been similar attempts for other
applications?

The bigger picture is that I'd like to use Quicklisp to download and
install Maxima packages, and Quicklisp uses ASDF to compile
and load stuff.

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this problem.

Robert Dodier