I have a note to myself to remove SOURCE-FILE-TYPE from the manual, and I see that it's there just for backwards compatibility. Am I correct in saying that this should be replaced by COMPONENT-TYPE? That's what the comment says, but then I see this: (defmethod source-file-type ((component file-component) (system parent-component)) (file-type component))) which suggests FILE-TYPE, not COMPONENT-TYPE is The Right Thing. Also, what the heck is the return type of this? I see the following: (defmethod source-file-type ((component parent-component) (system parent-component)) :directory) which suggests that it's something like (or string (eql :directory)). Ugh. Shouldn't asking for the file-type of a PARENT-COMPONENT simply be an error? Sorry to bother you about this: just trying to kill something that's languished on my todo list for more than a year. cheers, r