On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 6:07 PM, Robert Goldman rpgoldman@sift.net wrote:
On 11/17/15 Nov 17 -4:00 PM, Stelian Ionescu wrote:
On Tue, 2015-11-17 at 11:11 -0600, Robert Goldman wrote:
We have had a number of ASDF 3 releases that have mostly been aimed at bug-fixing (although some new features have crept in).
I'd like to declare ASDF 3 feature complete and done, but I don't want to close the door to future bug fix releases as needed, nor do I want to shove incomplete new features out in order to get bug fixes out.
One suggestion I have before doing that is to remove the whole upgrading mechanism. The purpose of it was to allow loading ASDF3 over ASDF 1/2 when the various implementations were only shipping with the latter, but IMO it's now just a burden.
I believe it's still useful in case one needs to upgrade even an ASDF 3 installation. Particularly if we start work on an ASDF 4 that's not fully compatible....
But perhaps Fare can weigh in on this.
I agree that upgrading from asdf 1 or 2 is happily becoming less relevant these days.
I'm not sure which parts of the upgrade support exactly can be done away with. Certainly not the parts that declare functions not-inline, etc. Most probably not the parts that deal with package upgrade. But perhaps most of the header, and some of the upgrade magic.
Simplifying upgrade would be a good idea for an ASDF 3.2 branch. But on the one hand I'm not sure I want to spend time heavily testing these things on N implementations, as would be required; and on the other hand I suspect the gains will remain minor, though worthwhile.
That's would be good exercise for a new ASDF co-maintainer, if someone volunteers to become one. Adding it to the (already large) TODO.
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. — Samuel Goldwyn