Thank you all for the reponses. Just some answers in random order.
First of all a "data" directory may be a build time dependency; my use case is loading a bunch of files with "tables" and some code depends on these tables. Or a "deployment" dependency, YMMV. Second, yes: you can do the (dolist ... (load ...)) thingy, but the whole point of ASDF etc is to have a declarative (as possible) specification of your system/library/package. As per Robert: 1. Are you asking how to tell ASDF to slurp all the data files *without listing them explicitly*? 2. What do you mean by "at once"? Do you mean pull them all in a single operation (e.g., by appending them all to a single file and then loading that file)? Or do you just mean "I would like to be able to write a single s-expression to load all these files"? 1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. Perl is against my religion, unless it is Lingua::Romana::Perligata It looks like the asdf/contrib/wild-modules.lisp mentioned by Faré goes in that direction. I will give it a spin. All the best Marco On Mon, Dec 1, 2025 at 8:51 AM Svante v. Erichsen <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi! > > To be honest, a “data” directory doesn't sound like a build time > dependency, but who knows. > > Yours aye > > Svante > > > Am 1. Dezember 2025 03:59:19 MEZ schrieb "Faré" <[email protected]>: > >> On Sun, Nov 30, 2025 at 12:52 PM Scott L. Burson <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> Why use ASDF? It's a 2-liner in CL: >>> >>> (dolist (f (directory ".../data/")) >>> (load f)) >>> >>> This use of directory is not portable at all, unlike >> uiop:directory-files (UIOP being part of ASDF). >> Also, ASDF will load your files once and only once as needed, enforce >> load dependency order both ways, and integrate with the rest of your >> build and other related tools. >> >> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• >> http://fare.tunes.org >> “Faré's Tenth Rule of Programming: any sufficiently useful CL build >> system is an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow non-portable >> implementation of a fraction of ASDF much larger than what it takes to >> just use ASDF.” [Including ASDF] >> >> -- Marco Antoniotti, Professor, Director tel. +39 - 02 64 48 79 01 DISCo, University of Milan-Bicocca U14 2043 http://dcb.disco.unimib.it Viale Sarca 336 I-20126 Milan (MI) ITALY REGAINS: https://regains.disco.unimib.it/
