Re: rfc - delay the parsing of system components

Gary King <[email protected]> writes:

> The question reduces to whether or not this is a different species. I
> don't think it is. Richard correctly points out that my proposal might
> cause problems in the "wild" but there is no evidence for this
> (yet...). To my mind, I've kept the same syntax and ASDF does the same
> operations in the same order (at least in as much as ASDF ever did the
> same things in the same order...). The only change is that instead of
> planning everything before executing, ASDF would now execute as it
> went. I don't see this as incompatible. Do you?

Yes, I do, because (as I understand it) it means that performing
operations on components now wraps operations on subcomponents, rather
than happening afterwards.

If this causes no difficulties in the wild, then it also costs you
very little to call this "GHJK", provide an in-the-wild-compatible
"ASDF" package, and advertise 99.9% (or whatever) ASDF-compatibility,
without the horrible broken bits and with additional capabilities.

The cost of not doing so is, in my experience, huge: over time,
references to "ASDF"-the-software accumulate, and suddenly no-one
knows whether a particular reference applies to before or after your
change, or both.

I don't see why you even _want_ to keep the same name, frankly.

Best,

Christophe

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