On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Zach Beane <xach@xach.com> wrote:
I stopped updating ASDF versions when it seemed to require asdf-ecl.lisp
to work on ECL. Is the case? Can ECL get by with asdf.lisp alone?
Since Faré took over ASDF, ASDF has worked perfectly fine with ECL so that is not a reason not to upgrade. However, asdf-ecl.lisp was not developed to fix asdf.lisp, but to introduce operations that make ASDF more efficient with ECL.
In other words, ECL can do with asdf alone but this is undesirable. For instance, quicklisp's reliance on 'ASDF:LOAD-OP implies loading an average of 10 times more files than ECL's ASDF:LOAD-FASL-OP, and also a greater pressure on the operating system, for ECL relies on native methods for loading binaries.
Moreover, asdf-ecl allows one to take quicklisp distribution and produce a standalone executable, or a shared library (DLL) with one ASDF operation. This, which I find extremely nice, has been ported by Fare to other implementations in a successor to asdf-ecl that I have not yet had the time to integrate in ECL.