As an advanced beginner I recall very well the difficulties to set up the first working Lisp environment. One step is the installation of ASDF. Not very complicated, but not necessary when using SBCL. There you simply say (require 'asdf) and your done. Is there any chance to include this into LW too? What do others think about this? -Jens
I think it's a great idea - in fact, anything that makes Lisp or LispWorks more user-friendly. Beyond that, I'll hold my tongue and let the "real" programmers weigh in. Laughing Water On Feb 3, 2008, at 4:23 PM, Jens Teich wrote: > > As an advanced beginner I recall very well the difficulties to set > up the first working Lisp environment. > > One step is the installation of ASDF. Not very complicated, but not > necessary when using SBCL. There > you simply say (require 'asdf) and your done. > > Is there any chance to include this into LW too? What do others > think about this? > > -Jens > >
+1 ....and I'd also vote for including Edi's lw-add-ons by default. ;) But this may be risky, because the LispWorkers would have to maintain the integration of code they don't control... Pascal On 4 Feb 2008, at 00:23, Jens Teich wrote: > > As an advanced beginner I recall very well the difficulties to set > up the first working Lisp environment. > > One step is the installation of ASDF. Not very complicated, but not > necessary when using SBCL. There > you simply say (require 'asdf) and your done. > > Is there any chance to include this into LW too? What do others > think about this? > > -Jens > -- 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08) http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/ Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 00:23:41 +0100, Jens Teich <info@jensteich.de> wrote: > As an advanced beginner I recall very well the difficulties to set > up the first working Lisp environment. > > One step is the installation of ASDF. Not very complicated, but not > necessary when using SBCL. There you simply say (require 'asdf) and > your done. > > Is there any chance to include this into LW too? What do others > think about this? I think that's a good idea. To clarify one thing first - this is, as Jens also said, mainly for our beloved "newbies". I've been following comp.lang.lisp and lots of Lisp mailing lists over the last nine years or so and I think it's hard to deny that, like it or not, a) ASDF is the de-facto standard for open source Lisp libraries nowadays, and b) people new to Lisp usually seem to have a hard time setting up an environment where they can quickly load and try some of these libraries. If a Lisp implementation comes with ASDF out of the box, that's at least one potential stumbling block that's out of the way. SBCL always had ASDF integrated (that's where it came from), and today at least OpenMCL, ECL, and, cough, AllegroCL also have it. The license certainly can't be a problem - otherwise Franz' lawyers wouldn't have agreed to distribute it with their product... :) So, I think it would be in LispWorks' own long-term interest to bundle ASDF as well. It will probably, hopefully help to make LispWorks more attractive for people who come to CL for the first time. I, personally, don't care that much. Like almost everyone else on this mailing list, I already know how where to get and how to load a library if I need it, but I'm not a member of the target group. So, yeah, you have my vote... :) Edi.
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 00:49:01 -0500, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro@mac.com> wrote: > While you're at it, include asdf-install as well. I don't think that's a good idea. It is still in flux, there are competing versions, it depends on external applications like tar and GPG, and it is more or less useless on Windows.
I second this, if anyone's taking a poll.
Jens, I would be very surprised if they do so, given that LW already has a defsystem utility. http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/LWRM/html/lwref-284.htm#pgfId-1120217 Bruno On 3-Feb-08, at 6:23 PM, Jens Teich wrote: > > As an advanced beginner I recall very well the difficulties to set > up the first working Lisp environment. > > One step is the installation of ASDF. Not very complicated, but not > necessary when using SBCL. There > you simply say (require 'asdf) and your done. > > Is there any chance to include this into LW too? What do others > think about this? > > -Jens >
Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu> writes: > what is the problem of sticking > > (load "/path/to/asdf.lisp") > > in your .lispworks file? It's one more hurdle for the newbie to pass before it has a working environment. This is a proposed cuddle-the-newbies feature, AIUI, not for a seasoned user like yourself. If you already know how to find and load mk:defsystem or asdf, you're not in the target group. > (or, why not?, for those of us who stick to it) MK:DEFSYSTEM, The why not is that like it or not, ASDF is the system definition tool of choice for most of the librarise on common-lisp.net. As long as the goal is to lower the barrier to entry, providing MK:DEFSYSTEM doesn't really help as much as providing ASDF. -- Mvh/Regards Peder O. Klingenberg
Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu> writes: > IMHO, the newbie has more hurdles to jump than to be able to make any > sense out of systems and stuff. I think the point was to allow them to use all the fancy libraries without having to make any sense out of systems and stuff. I'm not convinced that including ASDF in Lispworks will make the hordes turn to lisp(-works), but I can't see the harm either. -- Mvh/Regards Peder O. Klingenberg Netfonds Bank ASA
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 16:53:36 GMT, Nick Levine <ndl@ravenbrook.com> wrote: > 1) Search for "asdf" in google... *sigh* > 2) Search for "asdf lisp" in google > 3) Click on the first link (http://www.cliki.net/asdf) > 4) Download asdf.lisp by using the link on the CLiki ASDF page > 5) Trying to figure out how to load files on LispWorks startup > 6) Perhaps give up on that because he uses the Personal Edition > 7) Be prepared to actually learn how to install an ASDF package > > And then discover: > > 8) I'm on Windows and this is a real mess. I haven't had any problems with ASDF on Windows so far. ASDF-INSTALL is a mess on Windows, yes, ASDF not as far as I can tell. I'm using it every day and Windows is my main platform.
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:29:16 +0100, Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu> wrote: > (or, why not?, for those of us who stick to it) MK:DEFSYSTEM Or why not support Franz' project definition files? My estimate is that from the 300+ projects hosted on common-lisp.net probably 0 (zero) use MK:DEFSYSTEM. That's the relevant difference between it and ASDF.
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 17:42:56 +0100, Jochen Schmidt <js@codeartist.org> wrote: > 5) Trying to figure out how to load files on LispWorks startup > 6) Perhaps give up on that because he uses the Personal Edition That's another good point, BTW. Several people said that it's not so hard to put the line (load "asdf") in your ~/.lispworks file. That's true, but it doesn't really help you if your ~/.lispworks file isn't loaded... :) As, again, this is mostly about "newbies", one can assume that almost all of them will start with the Personal Edition.
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 21:42:06 +0100, Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu> wrote: > My projects on common-lisp.net all come with both ASDF and > MK:DEFSYSTEM definition files. That is at least 3. OK, but it's the same order of magnitude as zero... :) FWIW, there are at least three projects on common-lisp.net maintained by Kenny Tilton, so I think there are at least three projects there which come with AllegroCL .lpr files... :)
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 18:36:11 +0100, Jochen Schmidt <js@codeartist.org> wrote: > One at least doesn't have to use symlinks though. So it would be at > least getting tar and gzip. Perhaps we could also include > GZIP-STREAM and ARCHIVE so that ASDF tarballs could even be > unarchived by lispworks itself in portable common lisp. That has all been done already, FWIW. Source code can be found here: http://weitz.de/starter-pack/ Edi.