Sorry if there was some confusion. There are no plans to bundle asdf-encodings in with asdf in the next release of the SCL. The bundled version of asdf is expected to be the same as the normal release, except for any minor SCL specific fixes.
Oh, OK. Good. My apologies for not getting it. Your plan looks good.
The next release of the SCL integrates comprehensive support for reading a text file character encoding from an Emacs style coding attribute. The support was contributed to public domain CMUCL if you wish to examine it. This allows 'load and 'compiler, and the debugger, and many editors, to also use the correct encoding. The new external-format has been named :file-attribute. It has not been decided if this will be the :default, but a separate default will be provided for lisp source files. I am open to working with other vendors on standardising the support, but there has been little interest.
I believe I saw an earlier version of it. Is it in the current version of CMUCL from CVS? asdf::default-encoding-external-format could use :file-attribute instead of :default on SCL.
I would not suggest bundling asdf-encodings in with ASDF, but suggest CL implementations integrate the support so that it works with 'load and 'compile' and editors.
That sounds like an interesting plan.
Code was contributed earlier in the year to insert the file attribute and/or transcode all of the quicklisp source distributions so there are lots of options for users and library authors.
Is that the code we saw on that list? Did you get any feedback since then? IIRC, there were ~7 problematic systems that needed to be updated for UTF-8.
Perhaps the asdf-encodings could be made an implementation specific support library that is only loaded for CL implementations without integrated support.
That's a can of worm I'm trying to move away from.
Some time next month, we should go over quicklisp again and see if we can resolve those ~7 remaining systems, and maybe change the defaults for ASDF.
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org The greatest productive force is human selfishness. — Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"