On 5/4/17 May 4 -8:54 AM, James M. Lawrence wrote: > LispWorks PE bundles an old asdf, which is loaded with (require "asdf").
Is this because LWPE is still LW 6 instead of 7? > > CLISP optionally bundles asdf -- (require "asdf") -- and I would > expect some Linux distributions to have that configuration in the > CLISP they supply. (require "asdf") also looks in directories > (including the user home directory!) for asdf.lisp, so an old version > could be unintentionally loaded. My real concern is LispWorks, though. We can't really handle clisp effectively, because as far as releases are concerned, it's dead. I realize that the code repo is active, but releases aren't being made, which means the de facto standard is now something going on 7 years old. That's not the ASDF project's fault. > > Maybe this wasn't clear enough, but my communications here are on > behalf of users, not me. Many -- perhaps most, perhaps nearly all -- > people use asdf only indirectly through Quicklisp. I am trying to help > the poor end-user who has a borked system and doesn't understand what > is wrong. I would like to prevent the borkedness from happening in the > first place. > > Most people initialize Quicklisp in their startup file. After using > the lisp image for a while, they may wish to load a system and > discover that the system requires asdf3. So they load asdf3. And then > everything is borked. It may be difficult even for an experienced user > to discover what is wrong, much less a casual user, and next to > impossible for a newcomer. > > In the manual I didn't see any of the caveats you mention about the > central registry. It says that asdf can be upgraded on the fly, and > that's what people will expect. They don't expect that upgrading will > bork the lisp image for some reason unknown to them. I will see if I can put in a FAQ about this. Look for something soon. > > The quick and dirty workaround I mentioned is not something that would > be part of any real code, just something a user could do to get things > unborked again, that is, to enable Quicklisp to load again. > > I don't want to use *central-registry*. I'm not advocating using > *central-registry*. I don't use *centry-registry* myself, except > indirectly through Quicklisp. I am not insisting on weird upgrades. > All I want to do is fix problems that end-users encounter. I'm not familiar with the guts of QL, but I thought QL didn't use central registry. I thought it used its own extension to the loading process. Best, R > > > On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 11:16 PM, Faré <fah...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 7:10 PM, James M. Lawrence <llmjj...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> The manual says "it is possible to upgrade from ASDF 1 to ASDF 2 or >>> ASDF 3 on the fly", and "asdf:*central-registry* is not recommended >>> anymore, though we will continue to support it". From the >>> documentation it is not immediately clear that upgrading is >>> purposefully broken. >>> >> Upgrading works. Central-registry works. Central-registry is not >> preserved by upgrading. And doesn't need to be, because >> central-registry is something you insert into a special configuration >> file that needs to first load the proper asdf, anyway. Whoever writes >> that configuration file by hypothesis knows where all the software is >> located. It just doesn't make sense to load the wrong asdf then >> configure your central-registry only then to load yet another asdf. If >> you do things like that you deserve to lose. >> >>> I suppose a quick and dirty workaround would be >>> something like (setf asdf:*central-registry* >>> asdf-2.26:*central-registry*). >> That doesn't make sense, and asdf cannot guess what ancient version of >> asdf was moved aside. Once again, it used to try much harder to >> upgrade from 2.26 on sbcl and several other implementations, but that >> got too unwieldy to support, for no good reason. >> >> >>> Quicklisp's behavior of using the asdf version bundled with the >>> implementation, if it exists, seems reasonable, at least at face >>> value. After all, that's the version the vendors tested, and it may >>> already be part of the image (or speedily loadable). >> That part is totally reasonable indeed, and works perfectly. >> >>> Even if Quicklisp >>> includes asdf-3.1.7, it would still try to load the bundled version >>> first, so things would still be broken on LispWorks PE and CLISP. >>> >> Does not compute. Neither LispWorks PE nor CLISP release from 2010 >> provides ASDF. Quicklisp will then load its own ASDF, but that entails >> no upgrade. If you want a more recent ASDF on top of that provided by >> Quicklisp, you are going to lose anyway — instead overwrite >> Quicklisp's asdf.lisp with the recent one, or convince Xach to upgrade >> Quicklisp's ASDF to 3.1.7. Or use asdf/tools/install-asdf.lisp to make >> your implementation provide ASDF despite it not being provided out of >> the box. >> >> If you insist on such a weird upgrade, many things may go wrong beside >> the *central-registry*. Yet even then you shouldn't be using the >> *central-registry* to begin with. Use the source-registry. >> >> >>> Therefore the real question is whether people should load the asdf >>> bundled with the implementation, either on their own or through >>> Quicklisp. If upgrading wasn't broken, things would just work and we >>> wouldn't have to debate that question. >>> >> Upgrading is not broken. Your use pattern is broken. Don't initialize >> the central registry after you load the wrong asdf then load the >> correct one then expect things to work. >> >>> How about preserving *central-registry* when upgrading? That seems >>> completely natural and expected to me, even apart from the fact that >>> it happens to solve the problem at hand. >>> >> It's completely unnatural and backwards to load a wrong asdf, >> initialize it, then upgrade it. Please configure *after* you upgrade >> (and yes, *if* the configuration is for ASDF to find ASDF itself, you >> may have to configure that part twice; or just skip the part about >> loading the wrong asdf). And try using install-asdf.lisp where >> applicable. >> >> Finally, please don't use the central-registry for cases like these. >> Use the source-registry. >> >> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• >> http://fare.tunes.org >> Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet. — African proverb >
