Re: Two ASDF questions and a possible micro-bug

"Robert P. Goldman" <[email protected]> writes:

>>>>>> "NS" == Nikodemus Siivola <[email protected]> writes:
>
>     NS> Daniel Weinreb <[email protected]> writes:
>     >> Is there ever a case where a component has no input files?  The
>     >> code has a conditional that checks for this, but it's hard to
>     >> see how it could ever arise, and perhaps it should signal an
>     >> exception.
>
>     NS> I don't see why it should be required: it doesn't seem a
>     NS> likely source of problems, and someone may come up with a
>     NS> clever use for it.
>
> I think I once made a mock component that did a call to require.  I'm
> not sure that was the smartest way to do what I was doing, but it
> worked....
>
> I was wondering if a test component might not someday do this....

That would be a separate operation. (I seem to recall having some of
these somewhere... maybe in my protocols library.) TEST-OP would need to
depend on LOAD-OP of the same system. It would also have no output
files, so there would be no need to check timestamps.

A component that would need no input files but had output files could be
one that generated the content based on code. Maybe it generates a PNG
for a map or something. Or it downloads it from the internet. 
Technically, the input file is some file on a web server, but that's not
relevant to ASDF.

-- 
Rahul Jain
[email protected]
Professional Software Developer, Amateur Quantum Mechanicist


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