Handling of readme and license files

[Russell Sim]

Hey,

Thanks for the quick reply.
 
"Stelian Ionescu" <sionescu at cddr.org> writes:

>> I'm working with a project that bundles up CL systems, and then copies
>> them to a remote host.  To avoid copying unnecessary files, we rely on
>> the components and additional-input-files to find all the files needed
>> to load the system on the remote host.
>>
>> I found some ASD files to load on the remote host. These systems are
>> expecting to read a long-description, usually a readme file.  All of
>> these projects are using reader macros to load this data, and none of
>> them declare the file as a :static-file component.
>>
>> It's also often the case that the license of a project requires a copy
>> of the license be shipped with the project. Yet rarely do I see any
>> project declaring a :static-file for one in their asd file.
>>
>> Am I correct in my understanding that using :static-files is this the
>> current recommended way to declare these files?
>
> ASDF is a build system, not a software packaging system.
> The :STATIC-FILE component was meant to handle data files that might
> be required at runtime, not any metadata in general.

OK, I can understand this when it comes to my suggestion about tracking
the location of the license file.  Though I find it disappointing, since
some licenses declare statements like "Redistributions in binary form
must reproduce the above copyright".  Not having a way to identify the
license file makes it difficult to ad hear to the license's of all
project dependencies.


But regarding the readme file being loaded at read time in the ASD file.
This dependency is not track but it's required to build the package.

This could be caught if the builds were hermetical, and this would also
help with issues related other static files that are missing from the
ASD file.  At the moment it's just luck if anyone actually adds the
:STATIC-FILE components needed by their system.  Is there some way to
help system authors avoid accidentally missing files?  Since it looks
like a pretty common pattern to load the long-description from a readme.

I'm perfectly happy to contribute to a solution, I would like to help if
I can.

Cheers,
Russell