Rationale: To make asdf easier to use by providing a standard interface for configuring, installing, and removing systems

Details: To facilitate easier configuration, installation, and removal of asdf systems, I propose 2 new operations and 2 new functions be added. The operations would be install-op and remove-op, and the functions would be configure and config-of

These new components would work as defined below:

* New function: configure

(defmethod configure (&rest options) ...)

configure would, given a plist of options, print them to a file in the current directory (which is assumed to contain the asdf system to configure), for example `config.asdf'. If config.asdf already exists, it should be moved to config.asdf.bak before the mew config.asdf is written.

* New operation: install-op

install-op would, given a directory in which `configure' had been run, use the options given to configure to install the system. The options involved would be :sources and :registry . :sources is the pathname of a directory which is to be created, after which the contents of the current directory is copied into the directory named by :sources .

After the files are copied, all .asd files in :sources are linked into the pathname located in :registry.

It is an error to run install-op without first having called configure.

* New function config-get

(defmethod config-get (system config-key &optional default) ...)

config-get will, given a system and config-key retrieve the value of config-key located in the config.asdf file located in the same director as the .asd file of the system (after dereferencing symlinks).

This method is meant so that library/program authors can add additional configure options which the library/program can later access (Ex. a graphics library with an optional #d component could instruct users to pass `:3d t' or `:3d nil' depending on whether they want the 3d component. The user's choice would be accessed through config-get).

The functions will return 2 values, the primary being the result of the lookup or default if the lookup fails, and a secondary which is T if the lookup succeeded and NIL otherwise.

* New operation: remove-op remove-op would undo the operations preformed by install-op, first removing the symlinks in :registry then deleting :sources.

Comments, suggestions, questions, etc. are appreciated.

Krzysztof Drewniak

[P.S. I will not be available between 09/22/2010 and 09/29/2010 due to a vacation resort in Mexico which has an 80% chance of no free Internet]