On 3/18/10 Mar 18 -5:11 PM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll wrote:
On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:47 PM, Faré <fahree@gmail.com <mailto:fahree@gmail.com>> wrote:
What about instead investing in XCVB?
As much as I would like to have something simplify my life, it is not my choice to use one system or another. I was suggesting something that might help rationalize the current library situation.
Such enforcement will necessarily introduce backward incompatibility and pain, which I think goes contrary to the goals of ASDF.
I am not talking about something that HAS to be enforced, but that it can be optional. It is by no means a good coding practice to put things in the *.asd file that do not belong in it. Promoting this message from the ASDF development forum is not wrong by itself and need not cause any pain at all -- a warning message somewhere in the build, explaining the situation of the libraries in the system does not cause such a panic or disrupture, does it?
Right. But do we have a clear understanding of what should and shouldn't go in there? E.g.: 1. currently if you need an ASDF extension in order to make a defsystem understandable (e.g., we have an extension that provides a new SYSTEM subclass to fit with our testing library), then you must put (asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op <my extension>) in the .ASD file, and this is undesirable, I agree, but there's no workaround. 2. New class and method definitions. We don't have a good way to put them anywhere /but/ the .asd file for now. I see the point about good coding practice, but I feel weird about telling people to use good coding practice at the same time telling them they have to use bad (non-declarative) coding practice, because there's no alternative! Can you say more about what you'd like to do specifically? I don't want to discourage you from providing support for the sad lot of ASDF system definers ;-)!