Re: [asdf-devel] Bizarre consequences of FIND-SYSTEM in ASDF.

On Tue, 1 Dec 2009, Gary King wrote:

...

There would be several benefits if FIND-SYSTEM were to simply PROBE-FILE for a system definition in each of the configured paths (e.g. path1/system.asd, path2/system.asd) until one is found. Better efficiency, no pollution from unrelated packages, etc.

I agree except that ASDF doesn't require that the definition of foo be found in foo.asd or that bar.asd contain system bar. If we enforced this then we could say that find-system is a wrapper for a clever probe-file. Otherwise, we need to load definitions to make sure that things are happy. n'est pas?

Consider my comment as a feature request. Drepper's dso howto explains issues that might negatively affect ASDF systems in the large.

- Daniel