Bug#560781: (require :package) no longer works for CLC-managed packages

[James Y Knight]

On Jan 14, 2010, at 12:41 AM, Peter Van Eynde wrote:

> My current plan was to:
>
> - - make the inclusion of the CLC directory configurable
> - - add clbuild support to the package:
>   * clbuild would get downloaded and updated on the client machine
>   * we would have a new command clc-clbuild which would download and
>     compile the package as a 'cl-build' user. The resulting files
>     are world-readable, but not writable. (also updates should work)


Only root would be able to use clc-clbuild, right?

I don't really have any opinion on the specifics of the implementation  
or whether this would work well or not, but I'm very much in favor of  
a change that *allows* fasls to be created for use by all users,  
instead of compiled separately for each user.

I understand it can't do that always by default, because then it  
blocks apt-get for unreasonable amounts of time recompiling every  
installed lisp package for every updated implementation, like CLC did  
at one point in the past.

IMO it'd be best, from a theoretical standpoint, if the buildds  
generated actual binary debs for each lisp impl, but I suppose that's  
also infeasible for various reasons.

--

I guess my ideal debian lisp integration would be:

$ apt-get install sbcl cl-cffi
-> I have actual FASL files on disk that sbcl can use, so that
(require :cffi) just has to load them: no compilation necessary.

But since that seems infeasible, second best would be:

Works like today, where it gets compiled separately for every user,  
unless admin first runs a shell command like:

$ clc-precompile sbcl cl-cffi

At which point, the fasls are compiled for sbcl and usable by all  
users. An upgrade of cl-cffi would have to make sure to delete that  
cache, so that the per-user cache can be populated for the new version.

But anyways, this is all incremental improvements. What's most  
important to me is that, by default, without additional configuration,  
installing sbcl and the cl-cffi packages actually makes cffi usable,  
in the normal way (require :cffi), on the system sbcl.

James