Will you please post a backtrace from SBCL for this. I'm not at all sure I understand what you mean by "this line fails." What did you do to trigger the error? `(asdf:load-system "hello")` ? On 8 Jan 2025, at 17:37, Russell L. Carter wrote:
Greetings,
I am a common-lisp noob. I am not a programmer noob, nor a build system noob.
I have carefully studied fare's asdf manual, pages 25-26 in the pdf and backwards through the reverse dependencies of the terms used, about the package-inferred-system. I have a problem that I've whittled down to a very small snippet.
I'm using SBCL 2.4.10.117-507e7ae05 and its native ASDF, but also tested against ASDF repo head (ln -s into ~/common-lisp, verified in the repl).
My question is why this system, located in file "./hello.asd", containing:
***************************************************************** (asdf:defsystem "hello" :class :package-inferred-system :depends-on ("hello/src/main")) *****************************************************************
paired with the system/package file "./src/main.lisp", containing:
****************************************************************** (uiop:define-package :hello/src/main ;; (:use :alexandria) ;; XXXRLC This line fails: "The variable MAIN ;; is unbound". I have no idea why. Backtrace provides no clues ;; (to me). Load the library in the repl matters not. Elide that ;; line and (asdf:load-system "hello") => T and then CL-USER> ;; (hello/src/main:main) => urg \n "urg" as expected. (:export #:main))
(in-package :hello/src/main) (defun main () (write-line "urg")) *******************************************************************
fails as described in the comment. Sure I would like the answer but the more interesting question is how could I debug this failure?
I slogged through the late '90s debugging complex C++ template programming errors. Pages and pages of output. I don't mind doing it again. But I don't know where to start with this ASDF build system.
Thank you for any suggestions, obviously the answer must be trivial.
All the best, Russell L. Carter
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