[no subject]

[David Chapman <Zvona at MIT-OZ>]

In lisp in Remote-File 10.1, LMFILE-Remote 17.1, MIT-Specific 9.0,
System 86.53, ZMail 45.4, Local-File 37.1, DAEDALUS 45.2, Tester 26.1,
microcode 136,  , on Lisp Machine Eight:

I have a file of which there is only one version,
<zvona.coder>macros.lisp.1.  I qc-filed this, producing
<zvona.coder>macros.qfasl.1.  I then tried to qc-file the same file
again.  It died with a FAE error.  

Now, either the theory should be that qfasls get the same version mumber
as their source, or else it should be that qfasls are given sequential
version numbers like any other file.  In the first case, the qfasl
should be opened for write in overwrite mode; and in the second, the >
version should be opened.  

Now maybe the current theory is that you do some heuristic combination
of these two on the theory that you might want old qfasls for something,
so they should never be overwriten, and you want to know which qfasls
came from which sources, so in the case cited you can't win.  I can't
imagine any reason for keeping old qfasls generated from the same
source, but in any case a better way of recovering would be to explain
the problem and ask if  the old qfasl should be overwritten or if the >
version should be used instead.  No doubt ``this will be fixed in the
new error system'' with all the rest of file error handling.