why does ASDF ask to please only define system/test?

[Attila Lendvai]

sorry Stas, but i just had to dishonestly (?) cut your mail... :) with
the hope that it will incite some reflection:


> I specifically don't update cl-ppcre.asd [...]
>
> [...] and all the users can do is just to suck it up.


FTR, there's an open PR with discussion:
https://github.com/edicl/cl-ppcre/pull/30

i understand that "it was him who made the first change!", and
"everything would still be fine if he doesn't make a change!"... but
i'm not sure it's reasonable to expect this kind of conservatism in a
collaborative space. old ASDF was a piece of software that wasn't
designed for the tasks it is used for today (as in its API, let alone
its implementation), and that was causing a lot of headache to "the
users" you seem to be defending above.

i don't have a strong opinion about this specific warning. to be
honest, if i was the ASDF maintainer, it would be fine for me if the
warning was off by default, and i would only turn it on in my own CI
to send out the PR's and/or warnings to the relevant maintainers, and
then let old and/or conservative libs continue to misbehave as they
did with the old ASDF.

but it's quite disheartening to see all the trash-talk against the
refactored ASDF. i may be just one user, but the cleanup of ASDF
helped me tremendously! maybe i was using more deps than usual (~100),
and had to deal with live systems and whatnot that most CL users don't
do...? but prior to the ASDF cleanup i had wasted countless hours
hunting build-related bugs only to realize that there wasn't any bug
(in my code), and by getting used to mindlessly rebuilding from
scratch *any time* something strange happened.

conservatism, and the general hostility, has always troubled me in the
CL community, but i don't have a dog in this fight currently, or maybe
even anymore, so i better cut the talk...

good luck resolving whatever needs to be resolved for a better
tomorrow!

-- 
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world,
the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and
regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there
will be.”
— Lao Tzu (sixth century BC)