Wildcard modules support

[Robert Goldman]

On 6/24/16 Jun 24 -12:31 PM, rcn wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Will wild-module support ever be fully and "officially" supported?
> 
> Currently there's what appears to be a sample implementation as part of
> asdf/contrib but, if I recall correctly, asdf/contrib is bound to
> disappear eventually (actually, the documentation says this is an empty
> package). However, it's not clear how to use it, it's not documented and
> it's not clear if it will ever be a part of asdf or not.
> 
> In my mind, this is an useful feature. Not for small systems (which,
> sadly, are the majority of Common Lisp open source projects), but for
> large systems where new files may be added to a directory to incorporate
> additional functionalities (a plug-in kind of thing).
> 
> In these scenarios, wild-module definitions would ease development and
> system maintenance greatly. As far as I know, asdf is perfectly capable
> of implementing it and it looks to me like an implementation-agnostic
> feature, so I see no reason not to include as a core component.

AFAICT, wild-modules are completely undocumented and, since I wasn't
involved in their development, I don't understand what they are for, or
what they are supposed to do.  There are neither docstrings nor comments.

I also note that the code in contrib is more than 3 years old, so likely
doesn't even work.

So I am not in a position to answer your question (except by saying "WTF
is a wild module?").

In order to move towards integration, I would like to see some kind of
specification to describe the intended function of WILD-MODULE, and how
we intend to meet the specification.

Then we could move forward with getting the code integrated, and some
appropriate documentation into the manual.  A test suite would also be
required before we could "ship" WILD-MODULEs.

Best,
r