[Openmcl-devel] asdf location

[Cyrus Harmon]

On Dec 10, 2007, at 12:49 PM, Lawrence E. Bakst wrote:

> I think /Library and ~/Library are really two of the biggest  
> blunders Apple has made. They should be used sparingly.

/Library isn't much worse than /usr/lib. Having a ~/Library (or ~/lib  
if you prefer) is nice for allowing users to install shared resources  
without needing special privileges.

> It used to be that all information for an app was stored in the same  
> directory as the app. That meant you could move an app from one  
> place to another with drag and drop. In many cases now you can't,  
> because associated data is someplace else. "Now matters are worse."

What about the case where resources are shared by multiple apps? For  
folks trying to develop lisp applications the "put everything in one  
directory" model leads to much unnecessary duplication.

"Worse" than what? Why the quotes? Whom are you quoting? It used to be  
that we had all sorts of crap in resource folks. "Now matters are  
better."

> /Library is especially painful because if you install a new OS from  
> scratch you loose it. I try as hard as today's installers will let  
> me, to at least put as much as I can in ~/Applications and ~/Library.

Moving things from on old /Library to a new one isn't particularly  
onerous. But, sure, ~/Library can work. Hell, we can put things in / 
usr/local/lib and the installers won't touch that (I think). But I'm  
not sure if that addresses your concern.

> My preference would be to have an adsf folder in the ccl directory  
> and to set that preference in an .init file.

How do you find the .init file? Same directory as the CCL application  
or per user or both? What's in the directory? sym-links to the real  
ASDF files?

> That way I can move the ccl folder and it everything I need comes  
> with it. It also let's me keep old versions of ccl (I have many)  
> with the code that goes with that version. Something else you loose  
> with the /Library and !/Library approach. This is probably the  
> biggest reason NOT to use /Library or ~/Library.

I keep the sources to a lot of lisp packages and expect to be able to  
use the same trees for multiple lisp implementations (and often  
multiple versions of which). What you're arguing for isn't totally  
without merit, but other modes of using shared resources (ASDF files,  
etc...) from multiple lisp implementations should be taken into account.

> At 9:04 PM -0800 12/5/07, Cyrus Harmon wrote:
>> It would seem to me that looking in "/Library/CCL/ASDF Systems/" and
>> "~/Library/CCL/ASDF Systems/" for ASDF's central registry would be  
>> the
>> "mac-y" way to do things.
>
> There is no reason to blindly follow some Apple convention or "way",  
> especially if it's not well thought out.

Fine. Put them in /usr/local/lib if you prefer the unix name. The / 
lib,/usr/local/lib has certainly been thought out to death. Sanely  
resolved? Well, that's another matter...

Cyrus