Hi

CLAD can be used for *any* Mac/Windows/UN*X configuration.  The current limitations are that it assumes "personal" configurations and not "system wide/admin accessible only locations".

The issue is that, as soon as ASDF gets loaded, it should load CLAD as a minimal prerequisite.  At that point you have the CLAD package present and you can issue a

(clad:ensure-app-or-library-data-folder "ASDF")

or even a

(clad:ensure-app-or-library-data-folder "ASDF" :impl-dependent t)

And you will have the, e.g., "~/Library/Common Lisp/ASDF/" ready on a Mac, or the "C:/Users/MeMyself/AppData/Roaming/Common Lisp/ASDF/LispWorks/" ready on Windows (10, and 11 for sure).

Is that what you want?

I did write this thingy because there was a pesky configuration issue with - another shameless plus - HELambdaP (https://helambdap.sf.net).  I believe it solved the problem in a rather general way.

Cheers

Marco

PS  Of course there is another rabbit hole to be handled - or avoided :)
What you REALLY want to have in the "ASDF loading code" is:

(load-if-possible "CLAD-STUFF")
(funcall (find-symbol (string '#:ensure-app-or-library-data-folder) "CLAD") "ASDF")







On Mon, Jun 5, 2023 at 3:49 PM Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.net> wrote:

I was just answering what I thought was your question -- could CLAD be used as a source for ASDF configuration.

On 4 Jun 2023, at 15:57, Marco Antoniotti wrote:

Hi Robert,

AFAIU this is the configuration of ASDF itself, when loading in a fresh CL.  I think we are not clear about the timing of what should be loaded when.

CLAD does not need ASDF or UIOP.  It just has a .asd file because Quicklisp asks for it.

Cheers

MA


On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 9:00 PM Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.net> wrote:

TBQH, I am not as sure as I should be. I try to avoid all the configuration that happens while ASDF loads, so that I configure only after the load is complete, at a point where I can watch what goes on. As I have said before, I don't like the configuration that uses config files, environment variables or magic directories, because it's impossible to debug (by the time ASDF is loaded and can be instrumented, it's too late).

I believe the right thing would be for you to figure out how to add an entry to the variable asdf:*default-source-registries* that is a function that will collect the appropriate configuration information. But I don't claim to fully understand source-registry.lisp.

On 4 Jun 2023, at 3:29, Marco Antoniotti wrote:

Sure.

I am not privy to ASDF bootstrap.  Where would you start?

MA


On Sun, Jun 4, 2023 at 12:41 AM Robert P. Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.net> wrote:
The next step would be to add an ASDF plug-in so that ASDF can read its configuration from a CLAD set up…. :-)

-- 
Robert P. Goldman

On June 3, 2023 at 16:56:53, Marco Antoniotti (marco.antoniotti@unimib.it) wrote:

Wellll.  You need a CL to load ASDF, don’t you? :)

CLAD is minimal and barebones.  You can load it from two files (just because the DEFPACKAGE is separate) and it’s there.  Look ma! No ASDF! :) (Or UIOP)

But I see your point.  Time to add a clad-setup.lisp file.

Cheers

MA
On Sat, 3 Jun 2023 at 23:10, Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info> wrote:

I do like the idea of CLAD, but in this case isn't there a Catch-22? You need to configure ASDF in order to load CLAD, so you can't use CLAD to configure ASDF, can you?

On 3 Jun 2023, at 10:57, Marco Antoniotti wrote:


Cheers

MA
On Sat, Jun 3, 2023 at 5:28 PM Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info> wrote:

Dear Greg,

Thanks for the kind words! I am not sure why I didn't see your post on ASDF-devel, but I didn't. And I have seen several requests for moderation, so the list seems live. In case my response is interesting to the group, I am responding to the list as well.

A couple of disclaimers: (1) I haven't used Windows in more than a decade, and (2) I don't use these configuration files. I find I'm happier to keep all of my lisp configuration in lisp configuration files (clinit.cl, .sbclrc, etc. -- indeed I point all of those at one single lisp-config.lisp file), instead of having to hunt through multiple files in multiple locations for this information. So take anything I say with more than a grain of salt (given your cardiologist approves!).

That said, these config files are placed according to the XDG standard which... as far as I can tell only applies to linux, and not to either Windows or MacOS. So there's code in ASDF/UIOP that extends XDG to other platforms. ASDF documentation about XDG can be found here.

I don't understand Windows enough to understand this piece of text from the ASDF manual:

Since support for querying the Windows registry is not possible to do in reasonable amounts of portable Common Lisp code, ASDF 3 relies on the environment variables that Windows usually exports, and are hopefully in synch with the Windows registry. If you care about the details, see uiop/configuration.lisp and don’t hesitate to suggest improvements.

The relevant code may be found in uiop/configuration.lisp. It looks like invoking the functions uiop:xdg-config-home and uiop:xdg-config-pathnames might help you figure out where ASDF is looking. But I don't really understand the discussion about the registry above. I do see a bit of code that says that UIOP (and thus ASDF) look for configs in the value of (uiop:xdg-data-dirs "config/") -- maybe see what that evaluates to on your Windows box?

I hope that these snippets have been helpful, and if you find the answers you seek, please send to me and ASDF-devel, so that the information will be available to others.

It might be a good thing if someone with the resources would gift a Windows resource to the CL Foundation to hook into common-lisp.net so that the community doesn't have to rely on this kind of guesswork. I note that ASDF is no longer tested on Windows at all, since I don't have access to a Windows VM and even if I did, I wouldn't know how to use it (nor do I have the time to learn).

Good luck!
R

On 2 Jun 2023, at 19:40, Greg Bennett wrote:

Good evening Robert,

Some longish time ago you were kind enough to help me with ASDF matters.
I posted recently to asdf-devel, largely in the hope that you might see it, I confess.

Web search has, so far, not been helpful, I'm afraid.

I shall quite understand if you do not reply; your inbox must receive lots of this sort of thing.

I have a test system in c:/ASDF/asdf-tests/ copied from the linux directory /home/gwbennett/ASDF/asdf-tests/

Under Linux in my source-registry.conf.d directory I have the file gb-source.conf
with the one line (:tree "/home/gwbennett/ASDF/asdf-tests/")

Then in sbcl I can issue (asdf:load-system "gb-a") and all is well.

I have tried various spots for gb-source.conf under Windows, all without success:

c:\Users\Greg\AppData\Local\config\common-lisp\source-registry.conf.d\

c:\Users\Greg\

c:\Users\Greg\AppData\

c:\Users\Greg\AppData\Local\

If I issue, old style,  (push "c:/ASDF/asdf-tests/" asdf:*central-registry*) then all is well.

Perhaps there is no place for a config file under W!

Cheers

Greg

--
Marco Antoniotti
https://dcb.disco.unimib.it