Dear Faré,
On 21.07.2017 03:11, Faré wrote:
Dear Daniel,
if you're willing to fork ASDF over make-build, would putting a make-build compatibility function back in ASDF make you adopt the upstream version again? I have an implementation for it at the end of https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/asdf/asdf/merge_requests/34 but I'd need you to provide some more test case (a simple one exists somewhere in some old version in git).
Removing existing (and used) functionality from ASDF was only a trigger to stop updating it. I understand that you want to make it all-in-one solution for building, packaging, installing and loading systems with other very cool features at some point and I root for that. I don't think though that ever-growing ASDF is a good pick for a contrib. I don't want to bundle big monoliths with ECL, especially that user is free install his own version of it[1].
ASDF 3.x branch has changed a lot of things (breaking some working systems) and I expect ASDF 4.x to break some more. I'm 100% positive that it's because these systems weren't perfect, but I think that software written today should simply work in 20 years (like old Common Lisp programs – Metering for instance). This sole reason is enough, to stick to what is there now.
There were many fixes in ASDF 3.2 and 3.3, including ECL-specific fixes, compared to the 3.1.7 from which you forked, and forking is just more work for both you and us.
Don't get me wrong – I haven't started a fork – I don't have time for such waste of effort. I've tried to contribute and suggest some concerns of mine, which didn't meet acceptance (what is fine) – so I cloned the repository and backported some important fixes related to ECL. That's all, I'm not going to extend it or anything.
As a software on its own terms ASDF should be installed by user. That would break too much things though, so I ship the last 3.1.7 commit with some additional fixes.
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org Social peace will come when the socialists will love the poor more than they hate the rich. — Not Golda Meir
Best regards, Daniel