Upgrade failures for asdf-3.1.7 and later

[Faré]

The main thing is: do NOT use ASDF 2.
Please address your complaints to Xach for the disservice of providing it.

On Thu, May 4, 2017, 13:01 James M. Lawrence <llmjjmll at gmail.com> wrote:

> OK I now see the last bullet point in "Pitfalls...", thanks. I had
> searched the manual for "central-registry", which isn't mentioned
> there directly.
>
> This part could be improved: "startup scripts should load, configure
> and upgrade ASDF among the very first things they do". Let's not tempt
> the user to configure before upgrading!
>
> Another bullet says, "Now that all implementations provide ASDF 3.1 or
> later...", but that's not true. LispWorks PE does not. Yes, it's LW
> version 6.1.1. And CLISP does not, though I understand that situation
> is somewhat forlorn.
>
> Here's the reason all this is immensely unexpected. If upgrading on
> the fly requires reconfiguration, then I wonder what the purpose of
> upgrading on the fly is supposed to be. Now that I understand that
> caveat, I don't know why the on-the-fly feature exists. If one already
> has such control over the configuration, then one wouldn't have loaded
> ASDF2 in the first place The whole purpose of on-the-fly upgrades, it
> seemed to me, was to handle the case where such control has passed.
> For example the situation I mentioned: the user has the bog standard
> Quicklisp setup in their init file and, after running an image for
> some time, needs to load an ASDF3-only library.
>
> I suppose the root problem here is LispWorks PE. Perhaps it should be
> put into the same category as CLISP. On the other hand I place high
> value on having things just work, no matter where the user is coming
> from. If that's not possible or too difficult or too annoying then so
> be it. It seemed reasonable to try.
>
> Best,
> lmj
>
>
> On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.net>
> wrote:
> > Actually, I find that there already WAS a discussion of just this issue
> > in the ASDF manual.  See the node "Pitfalls of the upgrade to ASDF 3."
> > I have added another FAQ node to try to make this information easier to
> > find, based on what went wrong.  Review welcome.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > r
> >
> >
> > On 5/4/17 May 4 -9:59 AM, Robert Goldman wrote:
> >> On 5/4/17 May 4 -8:54 AM, James M. Lawrence wrote:
> >>> LispWorks PE bundles an old asdf, which is loaded with (require
> "asdf").
> >>
> >> Is this because LWPE is still LW 6 instead of 7?
> >>>
> >>> CLISP optionally bundles asdf -- (require "asdf") -- and I would
> >>> expect some Linux distributions to have that configuration in the
> >>> CLISP they supply. (require "asdf") also looks in directories
> >>> (including the user home directory!) for asdf.lisp, so an old version
> >>> could be unintentionally loaded. My real concern is LispWorks, though.
> >>
> >> We can't really handle clisp effectively, because as far as releases are
> >> concerned, it's dead.  I realize that the code repo is active, but
> >> releases aren't being made, which means the de facto standard is now
> >> something going on 7 years old.  That's not the ASDF project's fault.
> >>>
> >>> Maybe this wasn't clear enough, but my communications here are on
> >>> behalf of users, not me. Many -- perhaps most, perhaps nearly all --
> >>> people use asdf only indirectly through Quicklisp. I am trying to help
> >>> the poor end-user who has a borked system and doesn't understand what
> >>> is wrong. I would like to prevent the borkedness from happening in the
> >>> first place.
> >>>
> >>> Most people initialize Quicklisp in their startup file. After using
> >>> the lisp image for a while, they may wish to load a system and
> >>> discover that the system requires asdf3. So they load asdf3. And then
> >>> everything is borked. It may be difficult even for an experienced user
> >>> to discover what is wrong, much less a casual user, and next to
> >>> impossible for a newcomer.
> >>>
> >>> In the manual I didn't see any of the caveats you mention about the
> >>> central registry. It says that asdf can be upgraded on the fly, and
> >>> that's what people will expect. They don't expect that upgrading will
> >>> bork the lisp image for some reason unknown to them.
> >>
> >> I will see if I can put in a FAQ about this.  Look for something soon.
> >>>
> >>> The quick and dirty workaround I mentioned is not something that would
> >>> be part of any real code, just something a user could do to get things
> >>> unborked again, that is, to enable Quicklisp to load again.
> >>>
> >>> I don't want to use *central-registry*. I'm not advocating using
> >>> *central-registry*. I don't use *centry-registry* myself, except
> >>> indirectly through Quicklisp. I am not insisting on weird upgrades.
> >>> All I want to do is fix problems that end-users encounter.
> >>
> >> I'm not familiar with the guts of QL, but I thought QL didn't use
> >> central registry.  I thought it used its own extension to the loading
> >> process.
> >>
> >> Best,
> >> R
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:16 PM, Faré <fahree at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 7:10 PM, James M. Lawrence <llmjjmll at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>> The manual says "it is possible to upgrade from ASDF 1 to ASDF 2 or
> >>>>> ASDF 3 on the fly", and "asdf:*central-registry* is not recommended
> >>>>> anymore, though we will continue to support it". From the
> >>>>> documentation it is not immediately clear that upgrading is
> >>>>> purposefully broken.
> >>>>>
> >>>> Upgrading works. Central-registry works. Central-registry is not
> >>>> preserved by upgrading. And doesn't need to be, because
> >>>> central-registry is something you insert into a special configuration
> >>>> file that needs to first load the proper asdf, anyway. Whoever writes
> >>>> that configuration file by hypothesis knows where all the software is
> >>>> located. It just doesn't make sense to load the wrong asdf then
> >>>> configure your central-registry only then to load yet another asdf. If
> >>>> you do things like that you deserve to lose.
> >>>>
> >>>>> I suppose a quick and dirty workaround would be
> >>>>> something like (setf asdf:*central-registry*
> >>>>> asdf-2.26:*central-registry*).
> >>>> That doesn't make sense, and asdf cannot guess what ancient version of
> >>>> asdf was moved aside. Once again, it used to try much harder to
> >>>> upgrade from 2.26 on sbcl and several other implementations, but that
> >>>> got too unwieldy to support, for no good reason.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Quicklisp's behavior of using the asdf version bundled with the
> >>>>> implementation, if it exists, seems reasonable, at least at face
> >>>>> value. After all, that's the version the vendors tested, and it may
> >>>>> already be part of the image (or speedily loadable).
> >>>> That part is totally reasonable indeed, and works perfectly.
> >>>>
> >>>>> Even if Quicklisp
> >>>>> includes asdf-3.1.7, it would still try to load the bundled version
> >>>>> first, so things would still be broken on LispWorks PE and CLISP.
> >>>>>
> >>>> Does not compute. Neither LispWorks PE nor CLISP release from 2010
> >>>> provides ASDF. Quicklisp will then load its own ASDF, but that entails
> >>>> no upgrade. If you want a more recent ASDF on top of that provided by
> >>>> Quicklisp, you are going to lose anyway — instead overwrite
> >>>> Quicklisp's asdf.lisp with the recent one, or convince Xach to upgrade
> >>>> Quicklisp's ASDF to 3.1.7. Or use asdf/tools/install-asdf.lisp to make
> >>>> your implementation provide ASDF despite it not being provided out of
> >>>> the box.
> >>>>
> >>>> If you insist on such a weird upgrade, many things may go wrong beside
> >>>> the *central-registry*. Yet even then you shouldn't be using the
> >>>> *central-registry* to begin with. Use the source-registry.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Therefore the real question is whether people should load the asdf
> >>>>> bundled with the implementation, either on their own or through
> >>>>> Quicklisp. If upgrading wasn't broken, things would just work and we
> >>>>> wouldn't have to debate that question.
> >>>>>
> >>>> Upgrading is not broken. Your use pattern is broken. Don't initialize
> >>>> the central registry after you load the wrong asdf then load the
> >>>> correct one then expect things to work.
> >>>>
> >>>>> How about preserving *central-registry* when upgrading? That seems
> >>>>> completely natural and expected to me, even apart from the fact that
> >>>>> it happens to solve the problem at hand.
> >>>>>
> >>>> It's completely unnatural and backwards to load a wrong asdf,
> >>>> initialize it, then upgrade it. Please configure *after* you upgrade
> >>>> (and yes, *if* the configuration is for ASDF to find ASDF itself, you
> >>>> may have to configure that part twice; or just skip the part about
> >>>> loading the wrong asdf). And try using install-asdf.lisp where
> >>>> applicable.
> >>>>
> >>>> Finally, please don't use the central-registry for cases like these.
> >>>> Use the source-registry.
> >>>>
> >>>> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics•
> http://fare.tunes.org
> >>>> Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet. — African
> proverb
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>
>
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