On 2009-09-09, at 17:54 , Robert Goldman wrote: > james anderson wrote: >> [...] >>> 2. Logical pathnames are defined in ANSI CL to use case-flattened >>> pathnames. That means they are an extremely poor fit for modern >>> case-sensitive file systems. Some number of existing ASDF systems >>> would >>> break because their directory structures contain case-sensitive >>> pathnames. From the Hyperspec grammar for logical pathname >>> namestrings >>> (section 19.3.1): >>> >>> "word---one or more uppercase letters, digits, and hyphens." >>> >>> As long as SBCL hews to the letter of the ANSI spec for logical >>> pathnames, I regard logical pathnames as useless in portable >>> code. I >>> now use them only in code that, for one reason or another, will >>> only run >>> in ACL. [Note that this is /not/ meant as a criticism of the SBCL >>> policy.] >> >> is it perhaps time to deal with this as a community, rather that each >> asserting that they know better? > > Probably, but I don't think we should wait to get the function that > A-B-L provides until we have fixed logical pathnames. At the > expense of > being flip, that's like saying "we'll wait until the Messiah comes." > Especially given how many years the community has been saying "what > comes after the ANSI standard?"
there are now at least two re-implementations of (at least some aspects of) logical pathnames: a-b-l and fare's. in each case, because of the belief, that the language offered no alternative. i suggest that it is not only flip, but short-sighted, to exaggerate any impediments so as to render the problem unassailable. has anyone ever tried to specify a form of logical pathname which would suffice for their use cases. are the only real issues the case- folding and the word constituents? i ask, as i've found that, exactly by observing those limitations, recent runtime implementations are sufficiently consistent to portably define logical hosts for use with asdf. _______________________________________________ asdf-devel mailing list [email protected] http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asdf-devel
