On 9/22/10 Sep 22 -5:26 AM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll wrote:
There is a rationale for the splitting of asdf.lisp.
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- The bootstrapping code can be different for a shipped asdf (one that
comes with the implementation) and for the asdf that is loaded by users. This can be activated by an implementation by choosing whether to use defpackage.lisp or something else. Doing this with the monolithic asfd.lisp is a hell.
Can you explain this? I don't really get it. Presumably any implementation that wants to distribute ASDF can add its own "after hooks" in its own private copy. I'm clearly missing something here...
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I see some of your points, but I'd encourage you to carefully consider what I think is the core of Faré's argument: the cost/benefit tradeoff.
There is a very strictly finite number of hours that can go into ASDF development. This will eat a big chunk of them, and the benefit gained by the community seems small relative to spending those hours on adding new functionality.
Also this will incur a substantial cost in terms of testing hours, which are also strictly finite (although larger than the development hours supply).
Finally, this seems to make more work for implementation maintainers that wish to bundle ASDF, although perhaps that could be mitigated...
At the end of the day, of course, these are your hours. If you think it's important enough, there's nobody stopping you from forking the repo and doing this work. But as you've said yourself, you are primarily the ECL maintainer. Is this the location where you will get the most value from your development hours?
Best, r