make-build

[Daniel Kochmański]

Dear Faré,


On 21.07.2017 03:11, Faré wrote:
> Dear Daniel,
>
> if you're willing to fork ASDF over make-build, would putting a
> make-build compatibility function back in ASDF make you adopt the
> upstream version again? I have an implementation for it at the end of
> https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/asdf/asdf/merge_requests/34 but I'd
> need you to provide some more test case (a simple one exists somewhere
> in some old version in git).
Removing existing (and used) functionality from ASDF was only a trigger 
to stop updating it. I understand that you want to make it all-in-one 
solution for building, packaging, installing and loading systems with 
other very cool features at some point and I root for that. I don't 
think though that ever-growing ASDF is a good pick for a contrib. I 
don't want to bundle big monoliths with ECL, especially that user is 
free install his own version of it[1].

ASDF 3.x branch has changed a lot of things (breaking some working 
systems) and I expect ASDF 4.x to break some more. I'm 100% positive 
that it's because these systems weren't perfect, but I think that 
software written today should simply work in 20 years (like old Common 
Lisp programs – Metering for instance). This sole reason is enough, to 
stick to what is there now.
>
> There were many fixes in ASDF 3.2 and 3.3, including ECL-specific
> fixes, compared to the 3.1.7 from which you forked, and forking is
> just more work for both you and us.
Don't get me wrong – I haven't started a fork – I don't have time for 
such waste of effort. I've tried to contribute and suggest some concerns 
of mine, which didn't meet acceptance (what is fine) – so I cloned the 
repository and backported some important fixes related to ECL. That's 
all, I'm not going to extend it or anything.

As a software on its own terms ASDF should be installed by user. That 
would break too much things though, so I ship the last 3.1.7 commit with 
some additional fixes.
>
> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
> Social peace will come when the socialists will love the poor more
> than they hate the rich. — Not Golda Meir
Best regards,
Daniel

[1] https://github.com/avodonosov/ql-asdf-chooser