I seem to have forgotten to send this to the asdf-devel list, in case anyone is interested:
In the meantime, Robert's suggestion of looking at
(uiop:xdg-data-dirs "config/")
yielded a list containing C:\Users\Greg\AppData\Roaming\config\ and C:\ProgramData\Application Data\config\
On the basis of no hard evidence, I took it that the latter is where applications rather than humans would put things. I worked my way down the former, creating directories and files as needed. I had to do some of this in a terminal since my W11 would not show hidden directories or files (despite having set them to be shown in the Views menu).
The result is that gb-source.conf as described below now lives in
C:\Users\Greg\AppData\Roaming\config\common-lisp\source-registry.conf.d\
In a brand new Allegro, with (require :asdf) I can now issue (asdf:load-system "gb-a") and have it run correctly.
I have not tried the other possibility, being satisfied, and relieved, that one works!
Thanks Robert for your time, patience and suggestion, and Marco for the pointer to CL-FAD which I have used in other circumstances.
Cheers Greg On 2023-06-03 11:57, Marco Antoniotti wrote:
Ahem. Shameless plug: https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/mantoniotti/CLAD
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 <http://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 <https://asdf.common-lisp.dev/asdf.html#XDG-base-directory>. 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 <https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/asdf/asdf/-/blob/release/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 <http://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