Understanding UIOP/RUN-PROGRAM

[Faré]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 12:14 PM, Mark Evenson <evenson at panix.com> wrote:
> Is their any informal ASDF policy on the stability unexported symbols
> like UIOP::%RUN-PROGRAM?  I suspect y'all reserve the right to yank the
> rug at any point, right?  Given that UIOP::%RUN-PROGRAM abstracts the
> Lisp implementations capable of asynchronous operation, I guess it is a
> little more stable.
>
The interface to UIOP::%RUN-PROGRAM is rather stable at this point,
though I've refactored its internals recently.
For historical reasons, it isn't exported — it used to be quite uglier
and more limited than it is now.

I believe it's OK to use it, although we may or may not rename it if and when
we officially export it (and may or may not provide a smooth transition,
depending on whether anything in quicklisp depends on it).

>> If you only care about CCL and SBCL, you can use UIOP::%RUN-PROGRAM.
>>
>> If you want a portable solution that requires an external library, try
>> IOLIB/OS:CREATE-PROCESS.
>
> The "external library" library part of IOLIB always tends to make me shy
> away.
>
That's a valid reason to stick with UIOP::%RUN-PROGRAM.

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