If you save an image without using uiop's save-image and/or calling its hooks, then you'll save the ASDF configuration from the time you build your image. I've seen many people do that (e.g. stumpwm). Sad.

On Sun, Jun 4, 2023, 15:20 Robert Goldman <rpgoldman@sift.info> wrote:

Ah, I see. I think some of my work colleagues were doing something in their CL init files that must have loaded some ASDF systems, because they were seeing configuration happen before they got into interactive contact with the REPL.

Thank you very much for clarifying, Faré!



On 4 Jun 2023, at 14:11, Faré wrote:

ASDF configuration is lazy. It doesn't happen during load, but the first time ASDF is invoked, if not done by the user after loading ASDF.

On Sun, Jun 4, 2023, 15:00 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