Re: Added get-env-var to asdf

Robert Goldman wrote:
> Christophe Rhodes wrote:
>> Gary King <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>>> If there is no dissension, I'll check this in sometime next week.
>> get-env-var is a bad name.

Seconded, for what it's worth.  There are n ways to abbrv8 a wrd and
only one to spell it out in full.

>> Rather more generally, I don't think that it's asdf's responsibility
>> to provide everything that someone might want to use in developing
>> whatever it is they're developing; asdf is not a portability library,
>> and I don't see the value in turning it into one.
> 
> I understand that ASDF is not a portability library, but it seems like 
> environment variables are a reasonable way to configure ASDF systems, 
> permitting contextual tailoring that extends the capability of *features*.

Can you give a concrete example?  When I consider this in the abstract
there are two issues that come to mind:

1) A system that requires particular environment variables to be set
before it will build is clearly not going to work with asdf-install
(even a system that checks values of "standard" environment variables is
likely to break on non-Unix systems).  As such I can't see that the
facility is much use with the asdf/asdf-install based "free software
stack", but perhaps I'm missing something.  It's been three years or so
since I really did much Lisp and I freely admit I'm not up to speed
right now

2) You could make a very similar argument about registry settings on
Windows - would you suggest that asdf include code to interrogate those
too?  What about a .ini file reader?  xml parser for apple plists?
Where do you draw the line, bearing in mind that every decision to
include something new makes it easier to argue for the inclusion of the
/next/ thing ...


-dan

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