Re: [PATCH 0/12]: Add asdf-build-system.

[James Richardson <james@jamestechnotes.com>]

Andy Patterson writes:

> Hello,
>
> As promised, here's my work toward adding a build system for Common Lisp
> software. I still have some issues with it as follows:
>
Thank you!

> Getting things to work "out of the box": I'd like to set up an environment
> variable to allow implementations to find installed libraries, but it's a bit
> tricky:
>
> Essentially I'd like to have, in each profile, a setup something like
>
> export CL_SOURCE_FRAGMENT=#+sbcl \
>   (:directory \"${GUIX_PROFILE}/share/common-lisp/sbcl-bundle-systems/\") \
>   #+ecl ... \
>   ${CL_SOURCE_FRAGMENT}
>
> followed by
>
> export CL_SOURCE_REGISTRY=\
>   (:source-registry ${CL_SOURCE_FRAGMENT} \
>   (:directory \"${GUIX_PROFILE}/share/common-lisp/systems/\") \
>   :inherit-configuration)
>
> This would allow each implementation to pick up their own compiled libraries,
> as well as systems installed as source as a fallback. I don't know how to
> achieve that kind of a setup, so I'd like some help. I'm also worried about
> either blowing away user configuration, or having it shadow the desired
> configuration, since this isn't a simple search path which could be appended
> to. Should we try to patch the asdf implementations to handle a separate
> variable just for guix?
>
> I'd also like to hear your thoughts on how packages are laid out using the
> system, so I've included some examples. I was thinking that something like
> package-with-python2 could also be helpful here; is that the right way
> forward?
>

I don't really know enough to offer valid suggestions yet. There are
mostly the same questions/issues I hit when trying to package a lisp
program with dependencies. The Debian project came up with a thing
called common-lisp-controller
(http://ci-debian.alioth.debian.org/clid/clid.html/ch-clc.html) which
address some of the issues. It seems to build an abstraction layer over
asdf. I'm not advocating this as it does seem to presume a Debian-ish
infrastructure, just mentioning as a source of potential ideas.


> Thanks.

--
James Richardson