Re: Proposed ASDF modification

[email protected]
Newsgroups gmane.lisp.cclan.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>>>>> "NS" == Nikodemus Siivola <[email protected]> writes:

[...snip...]

    NS> As the manual is currently blantantly lying about the
    NS> interface (it claims we have an operation called
    NS> TEST-SYSTEM-VERSION -- we don't, we just export the symbol --
    NS> and implies that this operation is responsible for the
    NS> :VERSION logic, which definitely isn't true) I wanted to think
    NS> a bit more about how to go about the rest.

FWIW, this isn't the only thing the version is lying about.  Here are
some additional ones:

1.  There's a :class argument to defsystem that isn't documented;
2.  There's a test-op that isn't documented;
3.  There's a :version that can be supplied to :depends-on;
4.  The defsystem grammar is only partial.

I'd probably be willing to spend a little time fixing the manual, but
where does its source live?  Also, do we intend to make the HTML
manual primary or the README.  Probably we should make a decision
about that before the two stray too far apart.

    NS> My gut feeling would be to export VERSION-SATISFIES so that
    NS> components can specialize on it, specialize it on two strings
    NS> to do what BIGGER-VERSION does on lists of integers, and move
    NS> the slot-unboundp logic to an around method.

I'd really prefer that we NOT do this, honestly.  I think it's a good
thing that there is a standard for what version strings look like, and
how they compare.

At some point, if ASDF starts to grow, I think we'll probably need a
:version= in addition to :version>= (which is now just called
:version).  Assuming that all changes are backward compatible, as we
now do, is probably not tenable.  We may even want a version match
like 2.6.* that will match any 2.6(.<n>)* value, in cases where we
know that a library's interface has changed from 2.6.n to 2.7.n.

I'm not sure how much we need or want to agonize about all these
frills now versus waiting for 

But I can say for sure, having worked with Gary King's TINAA, that we
at least need :version!  I have seen "downstream" ASDF upgrades blow
up with my own eyes! ;-)



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