Beware logical pathnames. They may "work extremely well" in some implementations, and completely differently in some other —
Not according to my experience.
Have you tried to deal SBCL's enforcing of "portable" pathname restrictions?
or be absent or not well supported.
That would be a non-conforming CL implementation.
And we have been supporting these implementations.
In other words, they are not portable, not enough the extremely constrained subset that is defined as portable in the spec. That's the main reason why ASDF2, while it will let you use them, isn't based on them.
If you want to start on a crusade to the spec to be extended to be more useful and/or to get all Lisp implementations to actually use such a spec — I'm sure many CL users will love you (especially janderson!). Good luck.
I don't understand what I did to deserve such snippy remarks. ASDF 2 has problems with a particular conforming Common Lisp implementation because it depends on a feature that is implementation-dependent by definition. All I did is that I asked for workarounds and reported whatever I could to enable you to fix the problem.
My apologies for miscommunicating. My remarks were certainly not intended as "snippy". I just wanted to explain why ASDF2 made no attempt at actively using so-called "portable" pathnames, though once again we do try to support them when the user uses them.
Why do you have to :ignore-inherited-configuration ??? Is there or was there something buggy in ASDF2? Why didn't you report the bug and get it fixed?
I did report this particular issue on 23 January 2011 in this mailing list.
I thought I had provided required fixes. Apparently, I failed to make it all happy in my previous attempts. Since I do not have access to RMCL, I could not test whether my fixes did work, and was relying on you to provide further feedback it they didn't. Once again, my apologies for any miscommunication.
Please keep bugging me until RMCL is completely happy with ASDF2 without the need for any workaround on your side.
I think it's ok to have alternatives to the existing standard features. I don't think that ASDF should push such an alternative to the extent that the existing standard feature cannot be used anymore (or only with workarounds).
I am not aware that ASDF prevents any standard feature from being used, and if it does this is certainly a bug indeed. Please report any such bug.
I'm not sure what your intention is, but the way you react to my problem reports gives me the impression that you _may_ not be interested in giving CL logical pathnames the same status as your own Unix-specific solution. Maybe my impression is wrong, but then I don't understand your reaction at all.
We do intend to support your using logical pathnames if you fancy, and have indeed many times over patched ASDF for use with them. Please report any issues with using them.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, and my apologies again for any mistake on our part.
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org Chuangtse and Hueitse had strolled onto the bridge over the Hao, when the former observed, ``See how the small fish are darting about! That is the happiness of the fish.'' ``You are not a fish yourself,'' said Hueitse. ``How can you know the happiness of the fish?'' ``And you not being I,'' retorted Chuangtse, ``how can you know that I do not know?'' — Chuangtse, circa 300 B.C.