Re: MK:DEFSYSTEM-4.x (Re: ANNOUNCE: asdf, Another System Definition Facility)

> Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
> From: Daniel Barlow <[email protected]>
> Date: 28 Mar 2002 16:10:20 +0000
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> 
> Marco Antoniotti <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > The presence of :binary-pathname and :binary-extension in
> > MK:DEFSYSTEM-[34].x serves the purpose to allow you to keep different
> > binaries separated if you use different implementations.  With
> > judicious use of logical pathnames you achieve what in the original
> > MK:DEFSYSTEM was achieved with the 'afs-' stuff.
> 
> Yes, but binary pathname is rightly a property of the combination of
> source file, operation, and implementation.  If I want to write a
> markup-system-as-html operation in mk-defsystem, I'm not going to be
> able to generate output pathnames for it using :binary-extension ...
> 
> In asdf, OUTPUT-FILES is a generic function specialised on component
> _and_ operation, which returns a list of pathnames.  So, yes, you can
> still do the same stuff, but now you can do it for any operation and
> not just for compile-system.

That is a good idea.  Note that :binary-pathname is actually a
misnomer that I kept for historical reasons.  :output-pathname or
:result-pathname would be better.  As for the dependency on the
operation, this is correct.  However, in MK4 you have the
EXECUTE-ACTION gf you can play around with, which is specialized on
component and operation.  So yes.  Adding a lower level OUTPUT-FILES
gf is a good idea.  I just thought that for special operations you
would just write special EXECUTE-ACTION methods.

(back to other things)

Cheers

-- 
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
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