Using ASDF as part of an interactive app framework - storing components in memory?

[Robert Goldman]

On 7/21/16 Jul 21 -5:47 PM, Andrew Sengul wrote:
> Hi Fare, Robert and Dave,
> 
> Thanks for your suggestions, I read Drew's paper and his chunks system
> is close to the kind of thing I'm looking to implement. I also looked at
> cells, Garnet and Gendl. I downloaded Garnet and have been looking
> through the KR code; Robert, is there anything else you would suggest if
> I'm going to try using KR?

Not really. I only ever used it as part of the Garnet system.  Garnet,
FWIW, is really awesome but.... (1) it's bitrotted (especially its X
interaction and its pre-ASDF build system); (2) learning curve; (3)
stock look and feel is so nasty that you don't realize how awesome it is
(when I was using it, I had the great good fortune of working with a
human interface expert who told me how to fix the default color scheme,
widget shapes, and font choices, but all that customization was lost in
a proprietary corporate filesystem :-()

Are there any cells examples lying around?  Recoding them might be
reasonable.  Or it should be trivial to find examples intended for a
Truth Maintenance System and translate them into KR.  Maybe something
from Forbus & deKleer's "Building Problem Solvers" would be suitable.

> 
> I'm going to use ASDF as the basis for this project at least to start
> with. One of my goals is for the systems I'm building to be usable as
> portable software modules, so implementing them as ASDF packages is a
> natural choice. At least at the outset, I don't have a problem with
> ASDF's model being filesystem-based; it's fine for the components of
> each system to be defined in the form of files. I think requiring that a
> file be saved whenever a change is made to a component is inefficient,
> but that can be left for now. My eventual goal will probably be to
> combine a constraint-solving system with ASDF; perhaps chunks can be
> implemented as part of an ASDF extension.
> I've got the chunks code but it doesn't compile for me with SBCL, so
> more work will be needed on that front.

I tried for a while to get Drew's yale tools to compile, but I never was
fully successful.  On my "someday I'd like to do this" list is
extracting some of that stuff and making it more compatible with
ordinary lisp usage.
> 
> Any thoughts you have on this direction for the project are welcome. Thanks,

Sorry, I'm afraid those were not too helpful.

best,
r

> 
> Andrew
> 
> On 07/19/2016 07:13 AM, Robert Goldman wrote:
>> Drew McDermott made a build system called (IIRC) "chunks," that did just
>> what you want: it put dependencies on arbitrary data structures and
>> recomputed them on need.  One challenge is that his build system is
>> built on top of his "yale-tools" mega-library, which can be difficult
>> for outsiders....
>>
>> Here's Drew's paper, A Framework for Maintaining the Coherence
>> of a Running Lisp: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/papers/lisp05.pdf
>>
>> I suggest you read this, and see if you could graft the ideas onto ASDF
>> (with suggestions from asdf-devel).
>>
>> ASDF mostly uses the filesystem to track dependencies (although it has
>> an internal db, as well), so there would be a little effort to extend to
>> a non-file-centric build.
>>
>> Drew's key idea is that his system (and ASDF), unlike build systems like
>> make or ant, have as a primary job maintaining the integrity of the
>> running lisp image. [Faré may disagree with this claim: he comes to Lisp
>> usage with a newer perspective than my old-school view.]
>>
>> Drew's system is less fine-grained than the cells system that Faré
>> suggests.  I don't think the cells system ever got mature enough for use.
>>
>> If you want a dependency-driven, lisp-based constraint system per Faré,
>> I think you'd have better luck with the KR system developed a long time
>> ago at CMU.  It is primitive in some ways (hand-built on structures,
>> rather than using CLOS), but was used for years in a very high-stress
>> environment, so is much more likely to work than cells.  KR is available
>> as part of the Garnet UI system.  Drop me a line if you are interested.
>>
>> Best,
>> r
>>
>>
>>
> 
>