ASDF, Windows, symlinks

Executive summary: ASDF is only somewhat engineered to live on top of
symlink-capable filesystem, but the ASDF praxis is much more reliant
on that. Windows doesn't have symlinks. This is a problem, to which
alternate solutions have been proposed.

The question is not if the praxis is good or bad, but how to make life
easier in the presence of this praxis and filesystems like Windows'.

David Lichteblau has a patch that teaches ASDF about Windows
shortcuts. The argument in favor is that they are very much like
symlinks in practice. The argument against is that this is not true:
symlinks are used by GUI clicking users, not command-line using
developers, etc.

There was an alternate solution prosed by don't-remember-who that
added support for something like .asdf-link files, which would be
plain text files containing the pathname to look up. User-level
portable symlinks, if you will.

That's the introduction. Please note that while both address the same
question, they are really orthogonal. Maybe both make sense, maybe
neither.

I'm not against the shortcut patch, but I don't claim to understand
the POV of a Windows developer well enough to say which argument is
right. It has been also suggested that it might be better served by
implementation level support, which certainly seems true: ASDF is by
no means the only thing that might want to follow Windows shortcuts.

My initial reaction to the .asdf-link solution was negative, but I
cannot say why. In retrospect it seems quite sane, and it does have
the advantage of making it easy to write portable tools that
manipulate ASDF installations. I am for it.

*cough, cough*

The floor is open, please discuss.

Cheers,

 -- Nikodemus

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