[Ecls-list] compile-file-pathname bug

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 10:17 PM, Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at cs.tamu.edu> wrote:
> I understand that; but I believe ECL could be improved there too.  For
> example, if the file extension is not one that is listed for input Lisp
> source files (e.g. .lisp), then ECL could attempt to load it as a FASL.

That has caused a lot of problems in the past, specially in Windows,
with really annoying messages popping up all the time about files
being corrupt: following what you say, the loading of binary files has
to be tried first, and sometimes the files are lisp sources, not
binaries, and Windows does not just return -1 when the loading fails:
it annoys the user with a popup. I also have a strong opiniong against
feeding _anything_ to the dynamic linker just because the user says
so.

> At the moment ECL seems to the only free implementation that refuses to
> honor user-supplied file extension.  That in particular (among other
> things) excludes ECL as a bootstrapping Lisp system for SBCL.

That is because there is not enough interest. I am sure that the
extensions issue is not such a fundamental obstacle.

> That  would be OK, if the benefits far exceed the drawbacks.  However, I do
> not think we have enough compeling reasons for ECL to stay in that state.

As I said, I am open to suggestions and change, but you have to
understand that while the change to COMPILE-FILE[-PATHNAME] is minor,
the change of the loader has other deeper implications.

Juanjo

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