Yes the prologue and epilogue is (or will be, in the publicly and officially sanctioned ASDF-way once I send you my small MKCL mods for ASDF 3) used after all. Maybe not really by ECL, although it should, but by MKCL. It is an essential part of the program-op processing.

You are right about the fact that prologue and epilogue are not very well designed as they stand in ECL (and how MKCL inherited them from ECL). But they really make sense if they are considered in the context of #'compiler:build-program. I would even say that they are essential in the context of #'compiler:build-program.

I understand that prologue and epilogue are great things to be used internally by MKCL's compiler:build-program as the ECL equivalent, but I'm just not sure how much sense they make as features of program-op, especially since (1) ASDF 3 provides equivalent features portably through its uiop:*image-entry-point* (exposed as :entry-point by program-op) and uiop:register-image-restore-hook, and (2) ASDF's entry point is implemented internally using the epilogue feature, but that can remain an internal, for the prologue does not make sense for a portable ASDF program, though I can see how it can make great sense for initializers in ECL or MKCL libraries (the portable thing would be to use load-time-value, I suppose), for (3) portable programs can't really depend on the prologue and epilogue features, so have to provide a portable alternative, which they can thanks to ASDF3, at which point they don't need explicitly use prologue and epilogue anymore, and finally (4) the way epilogue and prologue and other compiler flags are done in ASDF right now just isn't right, and if they are to be supported, a better design is required, which I won't be doing, for I'm leaving after the Real Soon Now(tm) 3.1.1 release.

I am currently putting the finishing touch to ASDF 3.0.3 on MKCL 1.1.7 on Windows (3 more tests to fix). I should be done somewhat shortly and after that I'll sent the ASDF list what I have got, merged with ASDF head.

If you're quick enough, you can get it into ASDF before the 3.1.1 release, which would be wonderful.

Sorry if I could not reply to your ecls-list messages more promptly but I was out all day participating in a double fencing tournament. I did basically a somewhat marathon-like 8 hours straight of competitive épée, so I hope you will understand if I stand a bit out of phase with my computer keyboard for a few more hours while I try to recover.

Congratulations!

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org Mail addiction is a malediction.