[cffi-devel] Re: Use of Babel and Alexandria in CFFI
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Roland Averkamp <roland.averkamp@gmx.de> wrote:
Is it really necesary to use the Babel and Alexandria libraries in CFFI? Now CFFI depends on two libraries and every other system which uses CFFI needs these two libraries too.
That's an issue that was taken into consideration.
As a mere user, I was also a bit frustrated trying to compile the newest CFFI with all its dependencies, especially because these extra packages had RCS's that were not on my machine. The new CFFI was a long chain of upgrades and installs. For a newbie, this could be a real roadblock, and each additional step will cause attrition of the userbase. Might it be a good idea to repackage these libraries as TRIVIAL-FEATURES-CFFI, BABEL-CFFI, etc, and distribute these along with cffi? They would still be there, would be easy to upgrade, but would be invisible to the casual cffi user. Jan
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:20:54 -0700, JTK <jetmonk@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Roland Averkamp <roland.averkamp@gmx.de> wrote:
Is it really necesary to use the Babel and Alexandria libraries in CFFI? Now CFFI depends on two libraries and every other system which uses CFFI needs these two libraries too.
That's an issue that was taken into consideration.
As a mere user, I was also a bit frustrated trying to compile the newest CFFI with all its dependencies, especially because these extra packages had RCS's that were not on my machine. The new CFFI was a long chain of upgrades and installs. For a newbie, this could be a real roadblock, and each additional step will cause attrition of the userbase.
I don't mind how many dependencies CFFI has. It could have zero, or it could have 1000. All I care about is that a single action, (asdf-install:install :lispbuilder-sdl), will retrieve and install all dependencies. My install notes for Win32 state to use Edi Weitz's STARTER-PACK and my config.lisp file, which takes care of everything. As far as I am concerned, if a user does not want to use asdf-install or the starter-pack, then they are on their own. - Luke
I don't mind how many dependencies CFFI has. It could have zero, or it could have 1000. All I care about is that a single action, (asdf-install:install :lispbuilder-sdl), will retrieve and install all dependencies.
while we discuss this, we should be aware of the fact that you can't do much on the cffi front to solve this problem, unless you expect the cffi developers to put a lot much more effort into packaging cffi and all its dependencies. installing/upgrading a random lisp library can be a pain because there are no good tools that support it. putting a lot of effort into feeding the current tools instead of using those resources to develop better tools is not the best strategy in the long term. just the 0.02 of a cffi user, -- attila ps: yeah, i know that i should post code instead of trying to be wise here, but i don't want people to think that the current situation is the result of mere ignorance...
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:01:28 -0700, Attila Lendvai <attila.lendvai@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't mind how many dependencies CFFI has. It could have zero, or it could have 1000. All I care about is that a single action, (asdf-install:install :lispbuilder-sdl), will retrieve and install all dependencies.
while we discuss this, we should be aware of the fact that you can't do much on the cffi front to solve this problem, unless you expect the cffi developers to put a lot much more effort into packaging cffi and all its dependencies.
I just meant that if CFFI is asdf-install'able and its dependencies are asdf-install'able, then no additional work is needed. - Luke
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 11:20 PM, JTK <jetmonk@gmail.com> wrote:
Might it be a good idea to repackage these libraries as TRIVIAL-FEATURES-CFFI, BABEL-CFFI, etc, and distribute these along with cffi? They would still be there, would be easy to upgrade, but would be invisible to the casual cffi user.
Is this still an issue now that asdf-installability is (hopefully) restored or are you suggesting that we publish an extra tarball that includes CFFI's dependencies? If so, maybe you could write a script that pulls the 4 tarballs and merges them into one. -- Luís Oliveira http://student.dei.uc.pt/~lmoliv/
participants (4)
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Attila Lendvai -
JTK -
Luke Crook -
Luís Oliveira