[Openmcl-devel] asdf-install questions

[Gary Byers]

The bundled version of ASDF-INSTALL seems to go to great length
to avoid passing :ELEMENT-TYPE '(UNSIGNED-BYTE 8) to code which
creates a temporary file (letting that file's element type default
to some flavor of 'character) unless :CLISP, :DIGITOOL, or
the combination of :LISPWORKS and :WIN32 is on *FEATURES*.
It then reads a sequence of 8-bit bytes from a network stream,
and tries to write that sequence to a character file sream.

It's not immediately clear to me why that code doesn't try to
ensure that the file stream it's writing the data to has the
same element-type as the network stream it's reading from.
(The version of ASDF-INSTALL distributed with OpenMCL is probably
not the latest, and later versions might do this differently.)

Network streams are "bivalent" by default in OpenMCL (meaning that
it's possible to do both character and 8-bit binary I/O on them.)
Whether a bivalent stream's STREAM-ELEMENT-TYPE is some flavor of CHARACTER
or (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8) is somewhat arbitrary (either answer is equally
correct).  Prior to sometime last summer/fall, the value returned
by STREAM-ELEMENT-TYPE when applied to a bivalent stream was CHARACTER;
it's now reported as (UNSIGNED-BYTE 8).  I don't think that there's
a good reason to care what it returns, but if it happens to return 
something equivalent to CHARACTER then the code in ASDF-INSTALL::
DOWNLOAD-FILES-FOR-PACKAGE would happen to work.

I checked to see if the latest version of ASDF-INSTALL did things
differently; it doesn't seem to.

I checked in a change (might take an hour or so to show up in CVS)
that makes STREAM-ELEMENT-TYPE of bivalent streams be CHARACTER again.
With that change in effect, ASDF-INSTALL is able to download the file,
but doesn't seem to put it where ASDF can install it.  Someone who's
more familiar than I am with how ASDF-INSTALL is supposed to work
(i.e., practically anyone ...) would probably have a better idea than
I do of what's going on there.

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Chris Wright wrote:

> Hi
> I have asdf and adsf-install installed (!), but I have this problem:
>
> Welcome to OpenMCL Version 1.1-pre-070214 (DarwinX8664)!
> ? (asdf-install:install 'md5)
> Install where?
> 0) System-wide install:
>   System in /usr/local/asdf-install/site-systems/
>   Files in /usr/local/asdf-install/site/
> 1) Personal installation:
>   System in /Users/caw/.asdf-install-dir/systems/
>   Files in /Users/caw/.asdf-install-dir/site/
> 2) Abort installation.
> --> 1
> ;;; ASDF-INSTALL: Downloading 9030 bytes from
> http://files.b9.com/md5/md5-1.8.5.tar.gz to MD5.asdf-install-tmp ...
>> Error: value 31 is not of the expected type CHARACTER.
>> While executing: CCL::%PRIVATE-IOBLOCK-WRITE-CHAR, in process listener(1).
>> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
>> Type :? for other options.
>
> I've had the same error trying to install other systems:
>
> openmcl64
> ; loading system definition from
> /Users/caw/.asdf-install-dir/systems/asdf-install.asd into #<Package
> "ASDF0">
> ; registering #<SYSTEM ASDF-INSTALL #x300040FAD2BD> as ASDF-INSTALL
> Welcome to OpenMCL Version 1.1-pre-070214 (DarwinX8664)!
> ? (require 'asdf)
> ASDF
> NIL
> ? (require 'asdf-install)
> ASDF-INSTALL
> NIL
> ? (asdf-install:install :mcclim)
> Install where?
> 0) System-wide install:
>   System in /usr/local/asdf-install/site-systems/
>   Files in /usr/local/asdf-install/site/
> 1) Personal installation:
>   System in /Users/caw/.asdf-install-dir/systems/
>   Files in /Users/caw/.asdf-install-dir/site/
> 2) Abort installation.
> --> 1
> ;;; ASDF-INSTALL: Downloading 2577914 bytes from
> http://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/downloads/mcclim-0.9.4.tar.gz to
> MCCLIM.asdf-install-tmp ...
>> Error: value 31 is not of the expected type CHARACTER.
>> While executing: CCL::%PRIVATE-IOBLOCK-WRITE-CHAR, in process listener(1).
>> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
>> Type :? for other options.
> 1 > :POP
>
> I am not sure where to start with sorting this out.
>
> uname -a
> Darwin chris-wrights-computer.local 8.9.1 Darwin Kernel Version 8.9.1:
> Thu Feb 22 20:55:00 PST 2007; root:xnu-792.18.15~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
> i386
>
> I have installed both of these systems (md5 and mcclim) with sbcl on
> this box via asdf-install without problems
>
> I would be grateful for any help
>
> Cheers
>
> Chris
> -- 
> A/Prof Chris Wright FJFICM FRACP MBBS
> Medical Director, ICU
> Monash Medical Centre
> Clayton, VIC
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