asdf (find-system) with unfindable-by-name systems

In some cases of particularly messy dependencies on legacy systems, I 
find it useful to define more than one system in an .asd file.  The 
primary system name that I load-op is found using 
(system-definition-pathname), and its dependency systems are loaded, I 
suppose, as a side effect of loading the .asd file.  This has recently 
been a slight problem with (find-system), because now it tries to do 
(system-definition-pathname) on these "unfindable" systems to get their 
(file-write-date).

My current workaround is to define a fallback 
*system-definition-search-funtions* that returns the pathname of where I 
happen to know all the unfindable systems are defined.  This works well 
enough for me.

Another thing that would work is to not define separate systems, but 
make what I want to call systems be subcomponents.  I didn't do this in 
the first place, because I didn't want to lose the convenience of some 
of the automatic pathname stuff based on system names, but to be honest, 
I'm defining enough of them manually already it wouldn't matter.

But, is what I'm doing supposed to be supported?  (I can believe it 
would not.)  If so, I think it would be easy enough to save the pathname 
in *defined-systems* when loading a system and then 
(system-definition-pathname) can check that first (or maybe last, if we 
expect a system-definition-pathname to *change* to something earlier on 
the search path.)

Thanks,

Brian



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