[slime-devel] slime-ppcre

[Helmut Eller]

* Kilian Sprotte [2007-08-27 12:15+0200] writes:

> Personally, I find this quite useful - I am curious of course, what
> you think.

I don't have much use for this functionality (I don't use asdf much),
but it like to include the package, or try to include it, to see how
far we can push the contrib mechanism.

The code uses external libraries (asdf, cl-ppcre, iterate) and not
everybody has them or may only have an old version of the libraries.
For instance, I use vanilla CMUCL without preloaded asdf and had only
an old version of cl-ppcre around.  Since asdf is missing, the
swank-loader can't compile the CL code and Slime doesn't start.

I figure that many (potential) contrib writers would like to use
external libraries, especially cl-ppcre and asdf.  So perhaps we
should spend some time to make that possible.

The first problem is that Slime doesn't start, even if the contrib
isn't used.  
As one possible solution, we could add the source directory to
swank:*load-path* and instead of compiling the CL code at startup we
would load the CL source when the Emacs Lisp part is loaded.  I assume
that the ELisp part is only loaded if the CL part actually works.

Are there better ways?


In the long run, I'd like to make it easy to add new contribs.  More
or less I'd like to make the contrib directory world writeable,
e.g. everybody with a common-lisp.net account should automatically
receive write permissions for the contrib directory.

Any comments on that point?


Helmut.