On 20 Feb 2019, at 22:14, Faré wrote:
I've seen the pattern of using
:long-description
#.(uiop:read-file-string
(uiop:subpathname *load-pathname* "README.md"))
spread among CL libraries.
I see it only as a waste of kilobytes of data (quadrupled on 32-bit
unicode lisps such as SBCL).
I'm told it's because Quickdocs likes it this way.
Since there is not (yet?) any type enforcement on the value of that
field, can we instead agree for an alternate format, wherein the field
would instead contain the pathname of the long-description file,
relative to the (asdf:system-source-directory) ? Thus you'd use:
:long-description #p"README.md"
And Quickdocs and other documentation tools would do the right thing
from there.
Let me see if I understand clearly:
1. As before, if you put a string in here, you get the string itself as
the value of `:long-description`.
2. If there is a pathname literal in here you get the contents of that
file as the value of `:long-description`.
Is this correct?
I'm ok with this, but not so enthusiastic that I'll do it myself. I'd
be happy to accept a pull request.
I'd also like some discussion about how this change would come into
being. It's not especially backward compatible, but it should not cause
breakage -- people using older versions of ASDF would just see a
pathname in the unlikely event that they tried to retrieve the
`long-description`.
Can anyone else think of any unexpected consequences?
