Dear Juanjo, OK, so 1- you want an ASDF operation that dumps some description of things to be loaded. 2- you want to use a .asd itself as the output of that operation. 3- you want some location-independence in that description.
I presume the role of 2- is so that the result be somewhat interchangeable with the original source being packaged? But is that the case? Does interchangeability really bring more value than it creates confusion? For instance, XCVB-master (the module that can control XCVB from within current Lisp image) uses "manifest" files (or SEXPs) as a delivery mechanism telling it what files to load -- however, said mechanism is anything but location-independent, unless you use logical pathnames. Now, maybe logical pathnames are exactly the mechanism to use here, whether you use ASDF, XCVB-master, or some other homegrown delivery target. > I mean that the set of files should then be installed anywhere the user > wants -- as far as it is a path reachable by ASDF and the files remain > together, in the same directory. Using logical pathnames is not an option > because we can not know where the user wants to have the files. > I think there's a key constraint I don't understand here. Independently from how they are represented in the delivery file, how are you supposed to locate the components being delivered? Are they to be in a path relative to e.g. the truename of the description? In some known system path such as /usr/lib? Anywhere in some library search path? Some combination of the above? Note that if a search path is required, you'll need some additional facility anyway. > What is the purpose of this? Well, it would make software distribution very > easy, in particular for Linux-like distributions, but it would also be > useful for users that want to deliver a program and a set of extensions in > the form of ASDF system definitions -- a tool they are already familiar with > Sounds good. [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] If the Bible proves that God exists then comic books prove the existence of Superman. — seen on #Atheism IRC _______________________________________________ asdf-devel mailing list asdf-devel@common-lisp.net http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asdf-devel
