Dear Juanjo,
OK, so 1- you want an ASDF operation that dumps some description of things to be loaded. 2- you want to use a .asd itself as the output of that operation. 3- you want some location-independence in that description.
I presume the role of 2- is so that the result be somewhat interchangeable with the original source being packaged? But is that the case? Does interchangeability really bring more value than it creates confusion?
For instance, XCVB-master (the module that can control XCVB from within current Lisp image) uses "manifest" files (or SEXPs) as a delivery mechanism telling it what files to load -- however, said mechanism is anything but location-independent, unless you use logical pathnames.
Now, maybe logical pathnames are exactly the mechanism to use here, whether you use ASDF, XCVB-master, or some other homegrown delivery target.
I mean that the set of files should then be installed anywhere the user wants -- as far as it is a path reachable by ASDF and the files remain together, in the same directory. Using logical pathnames is not an option because we can not know where the user wants to have the files.
I think there's a key constraint I don't understand here.
Independently from how they are represented in the delivery file, how are you supposed to locate the components being delivered? Are they to be in a path relative to e.g. the truename of the description? In some known system path such as /usr/lib? Anywhere in some library search path? Some combination of the above? Note that if a search path is required, you'll need some additional facility anyway.
What is the purpose of this? Well, it would make software distribution very easy, in particular for Linux-like distributions, but it would also be useful for users that want to deliver a program and a set of extensions in the form of ASDF system definitions -- a tool they are already familiar with
Sounds good.
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