long-description

[Raymond Toy]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 8:23 AM Robert Goldman <rpgoldman at sift.info> wrote:

> On 20 Feb 2019, at 22:14, Faré wrote:
>
> I've seen the pattern of using
> :long-description
> #.(uiop:read-file-string
> (uiop:subpathname *load-pathname* "README.md"))
> spread among CL libraries.
>
> I see it only as a waste of kilobytes of data (quadrupled on 32-bit
> unicode lisps such as SBCL).
>
> I'm told it's because Quickdocs likes it this way.
>
> Since there is not (yet?) any type enforcement on the value of that
> field, can we instead agree for an alternate format, wherein the field
> would instead contain the pathname of the long-description file,
> relative to the (asdf:system-source-directory) ? Thus you'd use:
> :long-description #p"README.md"
> And Quickdocs and other documentation tools would do the right thing from
> there.
>
> Let me see if I understand clearly:
>
>    1.
>
>    As before, if you put a string in here, you get the string itself as
>    the value of :long-description.
>    2.
>
>    If there is a pathname literal in here you get the contents of that
>    file as the value of :long-description.
>
> Is this correct?
>
> I find option 2 kind of strange.  What if I really just wanted the
pathname as the description?  Having it produce the contents of the file
seems really odd.  I think it's up to the developer/user to decide whether
to display the file or not.

My 2 cents, as someone who doesn't really use asdf all that much (because
the projects are pretty much done and working.)
-- 
Ray
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