2009/12/1 Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll juanjose.garciaripoll@googlemail.com:
On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 9:05 PM, Faré fahree@gmail.com wrote:
I think that it is the very design of ASDF that a .asd file is Lisp source code, and that we thus reuse Lisp as the language to do magic there. What better way to load extensions in your .asd than that? After all, you need the extension there before you even try to parse the defsystem statement with the loaded extension.
Sometimes great power brings great responsibility and the fact that *.asd files can be any lisp becomes a burden for people wanting to port those libraries. Specially when then the library itself depends for instance on extensions that are defined in the *.asd file and not in the lisp objects themselves. I am right now thinking on software like ECL's extensions for packing libraries into monolithic FASL files or standalone programs.
I think you are doing the right thing of packaging this ECL extension into the same .fas. And indeed, I include it in the asdf.asd (though of course there's an interesting bootstrap problem in going from the asd to the fas).
For other extensions that are not as tightly coupled to the asdf bootstrapping process, I think that inserting (asdf:load-system ...) in a .asd is a better fit.
[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights, cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. -- Ayn Rand