I'm not sure why this is making you so angry. I've given you multiple
ideas for how to work around the behavior you don't like, but you seem
to feel it's my job to make changes to behaviors that (even if not
entirely correctly implemented) were settled on after quite a bit of
thought.
You complain about me intending to fix something that you feel isn't
broken: something that I never proposed to do.
At the same time, you want me to change the spec of ASDF to explicitly
endorse breaking things for those who use logical pathnames, and
potentially for users on certain file systems.
The existing behavior attempts to maximize predictability and
portability. I certainly don't claim it's perfect, but that's not
sufficient reason for me to throw portability under the bus.
Portability will *always* entail sacrificing convenience and capability
at some point. I'm not a fan of logical pathnames, but it's not ASDF's
job to unilaterally prune them from the language or support behavior
that punishes those who wish to use them.
You seem to think I owe you something here, and that you are entitled to
feel aggrieved that I don't give it to you. Have you looked at the ASDF
issue and merge request backlog lately? I'm doing the best I can with
next to no help from anyone else, and certainly more complaints than
assistance.
On 16 Sep 2024, at 1:16, Robert Dodier wrote:
On Sun, Sep 15, 2024 at 6:30 PM Robert P. Goldman
<rpgold...@sift.net> wrote:
As far as I can tell, the current behavior is buggy, because it
implies that ASDF will behave differently when the user chooses to
use logical pathnames versus when they don’t. That’s not a Good
Thing. That’s bad.
Well, all right. You go ahead and fix it, since it's your project and
you call the shots. But I will shed a few tears for humanity, and kick
myself a couple of times for bringing to your attention this
non-problem not in need of a solution. How many complaints have you
received from people using logical pathnames about the current
behavior of ASDF? Unless something has escaped my attention, that
number is exactly zero, so I can pretty confidently say that in a
concrete sense, you're not going to make anyone happy.
If I was to alter the documentation to reflect this behavior, I would
be describing something that is a bug as if it was a feature, and
worse, would be committing ASDF to maintain this undesirable
inconsistency going forward.
You could, of course, just dump the stuff about logical pathnames.
I've yet to encounter anybody ever suggesting that they are a good
idea, except for that one guy who was talking about how easy it is to
use them solely for the purpose of being an obnoxious prat.
This whole episode is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. The
very presence of logical pathnames in the Common Lisp spec is an
example of it, too -- some faction pushed it in late in the game (as
it suited their commercial systems that were obsolete even before ANSI
Common Lisp was adopted), and now, like the mariner with his
albatross, we're saddled with it for eternity. Yikes.
Robert
