Dear Robert,
failing test(s): test-configuration.script test-multiple.script test-static-and-serial.script test-utilities.script
OK, seems like exiling functions to ASDF-UTILS and no longer exporting from ASDF is causing this failure.
Oops. I've fixed the tests to work despite utilities not being exported anymore.
Question: what's the removal of these exports doing, aside from assuaging a feeling of tidiness? I get it that one might not like people using ASDF as a source of utilities, but is that not-liking strong enough to break existing code (or in this case, re-breaking code)?
I don't have a strong opinion on that. Apparently, Xach has one, and I care about his opinion a lot to improve the adoption of ASDF and other Lisp utility packages.
[Faré, your ILC 2012 stuff looks like a lot more exciting place to spend hours than tidying ASDF!]
I think so, too, and I've made significant progress in the last few days: working transformation from interface-passing style to traditional OO style, and now the beginning of actual description of the software in the article, rather than just a plan. Hopefully, the final paper will be ready by the deadline of the 25th.
I also get it that Xach doesn't like use of ASDF as a utility source for Quicklisp, because it introduces a dependency on bleeding edge versions of ASDF. But that doesn't seem to me to be a problem with use of ASDF for utilities per se --- the problem instead is that ASDF doesn't have a stable API[*]. Maybe instead of refusing to export these utilities, we should do a feature freeze, and defer future API changes (any changes to exported symbols) to ASDF 3, which may or may not arrive before the coming of the programmer's choice of Messiah.
Freezing the API would also have the effect of encouraging the development of alternative sources of utility functions. As people want more functionality, they will be driven to develop it in a freestanding library, and that will naturally motivate them to move away from using ASDF as a utility source in favor of a new library that does not have ASDF's special status. [As I read it, one of Xach's objections to the use of ASDF as a utility source is that it has a special status. This seems an eminently reasonable ground for objection.]
Best, r
- There is a separate problem that people might like to see ASDF wither
away, but I'd be happier to postpone preparations for said withering until it is sooner to come. The better is the enemy of the good, and all that.
Frankly, I agree that Xach indeed is both a bit early in wanting to move away from ASDF without a clear universal replacement in sight (and I regret to admit that XCVB isn't ready yet as such a *universal* replacement). I also believe that Xach is being overly conservative in his reluctance to upgrade to the "bleeding edge" of asdf *releases* while having software depend on the often unreleased bleeding edge of about everything else (including asdf-utils). But I'll do whatever makes Xach happy, because he's the one who's having the best CL software distribution so far (the only one with actual end-users, it seems).
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org Every task involves constraint, Solve the thing without complaint; There are magic links and chains Forged to loose our rigid brains. Structures, strictures, though they bind, Strangely liberate the mind.