[cl-debian] Re: clc, asdf-install, slime, fasl paths, etc.

[Faré]

Hello, CL-debian'ers.

I'm a new subscriber here.

I understand there are many concerns with having a fasl cache under
$HOME. However, there are times when this is not an option, and it
would be nice to have some semi-standard packaging system for CL that
supported but did not require system administrator access and/or that
could be shared between many machines with same architecture.

* It is evil to have lots of differently named cache directories under
$HOME, that clutter backups (and/or prevent them from nicely fitting
in your favorite media). Having everything under ~/.cache/lisp-fasl/
or ~/.lisp/cache/fasl/ should help. This would be the equivalent of
the current /var/cache/common-lisp-controller/$USERNAME/

* Since a same implementation (sbcl, ecl, clisp, etc.) can have many
variants (architectures, fasl or source versions), a proper cache
subdirectory should distinguish between them. c-l-c could (optionally)
rm -rf the global (and user?) cache directories when an implementation
package is removed.

* It would be nice to semi-standardize a string to name the fasl
format -- and encourage implementations to provide a simple interface
to such a string, falling back to some gross hack such as the one used
by SLIME to generate its unique-directory-name. Be careful to make
this interface user-overridable, so that the user may differentiate
things that look the same but are not. For instance have it be a
variable impl-ext:*fasl-format-name* that the user could set in an
initialization file or command-line argument.

> I could also build in a hook into clc to allow moving the cache
> directory. Slime could then instruct clc to use the same directory.
That would be nice.

> You mean from user-homedir-pathname? We just use that as a method to
> make $USER unique.
Several users may have the same $HOME -- it's a user variable that can
be set to anything, and the administrator might share paths in
/etc/passwd, too. It would be better to use usernames from
getpwuid(getuid()) -- maybe let the shell script wrapper do that if
it's too hard to obtain from within all the various lisp
implementations.

> asdf is only well-described for sbcl, that is one of reasons I make clc.
> I did not place the fasls in $HOME because I wanted to make life easier
> for administrators, and /var/cache normally is on the backup exclusion
> list already :-)

>> Maybe we can think of something that would unify what happens for user
>> installations for slime, c-l-c and asdf-install?
> 
> Well. I fear we have a fundamental difference in option: I do not think
> having fasls in (or beneath) the homedirectory is a good idea.
>
I think it's better to have a system cache, too. Sometimes this isn't
an option. Or sometimes, you want to share that cache between
machines. In any case, configurability would be nice, here.

[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ]
Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein bisschen meschugge.
(We mathematicans are all a bit crazy). -- Lev Landau