Advice sought on structuring a system

[Faré]

Dear Don,

sorry for a late reply.

The intended way to use ASDF in your case would be to use two or more
systems, that may be defined in the same .asd file (using the / syntax
to name a secondary system: roan, roan/core, roan/sqlite, etc.) or
separate .asd files (using - or . as a separator).

This way, you can unambigously name what is or isn't loaded in a given
system in a way that doesn't depend on configuration.

For a system that goes to lengths at doing the right thing with
respect to ASDF yet does some automatic configuration detection, try
net.didierverna.clon. It has ...clon.core and ...clon.termio systems,
and a special ...clone.setup/termio for autodetection.

I recommend strongly against using user-specified *features* to
control what does or doesn't go into a system (as opposed to
system-provided or system-deduced features).

Also, regarding people using disparate versions of ASDF: if you can
always ship with the latest ASDF version and depend on its features.
Also, implementations released in the last two years include ASDF
3.1.2 or later (which unhappily doesn't include clisp).

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs
when it's free. — P.J. O'Rourke