Dear Peter, dear cl-debian'ers concerning common-lisp-controller, there's one function of it that I'd like to be more extensible: (defmethod asdf:output-files :around ((op asdf:operation) (c asdf:component)) "Method to rewrite output files to fasl-path" (let ((orig (call-next-method))) (cond ((beneath-source-path-p c) (mapcar #'source-path-to-fasl-path orig)) (t orig)))) In my script cl-launch.sh < http://www.cliki.net/cl-launch >, I reuse the same trick, but clisp made me realize I was overriding your method rather than composing with it. Thus, I think we should rather have (1) a defun for the path translation, so it can be reused in other contexts (?), (2) an extensible list of path translations that is looked up by said function, so I can extend it. Also, it looks like you could use (getenv "LOGNAME") instead of HOME, to choose your cache directory. [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] The only Real Programming Language is that in which the Universe was specified, God being the only Real Programmer (I thought God was an integer???). Hey! I would like the source code for the Universe. Let's demand that God make it free software! (Actually, it is: everyone has the _right_ to understand how the universe works; opportunity is of course a different matter) On 17/08/05, Faré <fahree@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello, CL-debian'ers.
I'm a new subscriber here.
I understand there are many concerns with having a fasl cache under $HOME. However, there are times when this is not an option, and it would be nice to have some semi-standard packaging system for CL that supported but did not require system administrator access and/or that could be shared between many machines with same architecture.
* It is evil to have lots of differently named cache directories under $HOME, that clutter backups (and/or prevent them from nicely fitting in your favorite media). Having everything under ~/.cache/lisp-fasl/ or ~/.lisp/cache/fasl/ should help. This would be the equivalent of the current /var/cache/common-lisp-controller/$USERNAME/
* Since a same implementation (sbcl, ecl, clisp, etc.) can have many variants (architectures, fasl or source versions), a proper cache subdirectory should distinguish between them. c-l-c could (optionally) rm -rf the global (and user?) cache directories when an implementation package is removed.
* It would be nice to semi-standardize a string to name the fasl format -- and encourage implementations to provide a simple interface to such a string, falling back to some gross hack such as the one used by SLIME to generate its unique-directory-name. Be careful to make this interface user-overridable, so that the user may differentiate things that look the same but are not. For instance have it be a variable impl-ext:*fasl-format-name* that the user could set in an initialization file or command-line argument.
I could also build in a hook into clc to allow moving the cache directory. Slime could then instruct clc to use the same directory. That would be nice.
You mean from user-homedir-pathname? We just use that as a method to make $USER unique. Several users may have the same $HOME -- it's a user variable that can be set to anything, and the administrator might share paths in /etc/passwd, too. It would be better to use usernames from getpwuid(getuid()) -- maybe let the shell script wrapper do that if it's too hard to obtain from within all the various lisp implementations.
asdf is only well-described for sbcl, that is one of reasons I make clc. I did not place the fasls in $HOME because I wanted to make life easier for administrators, and /var/cache normally is on the backup exclusion list already :-)
Maybe we can think of something that would unify what happens for user installations for slime, c-l-c and asdf-install?
Well. I fear we have a fundamental difference in option: I do not think having fasls in (or beneath) the homedirectory is a good idea.
I think it's better to have a system cache, too. Sometimes this isn't an option. Or sometimes, you want to share that cache between machines. In any case, configurability would be nice, here.
[ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] Wir Mathematiker sind alle ein bisschen meschugge. (We mathematicans are all a bit crazy). -- Lev Landau