Re: DEFSYSTEM (Was: Re: Managing large LISP code)

[marcoxa@butsomi.cs.nyu.edu (Marco Antoniotti)]

In article <WELCH.93Nov4123510@valhalla.cis.ohio-state.edu> welch@valhalla.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arun Welch) writes:

   From: welch@valhalla.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arun Welch)
   Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.lisp.mcl
   Date: 4 Nov 1993 12:35:16 -0500
   Xref: slinky.cs.nyu.edu comp.lang.lisp:1029 comp.lang.lisp.mcl:719

   In article <MARCOXA.93Nov3102006@butsomi.cs.nyu.edu> marcoxa@butsomi.cs.nyu.edu (Marco Antoniotti) writes:

      I would like to see the MK DEFSYSTEM offered by the Lisp vendors as a
      standard tool. 

   Why? People don't expect their C compiler vendors to pre-build every
   bit of net.software, people don't expect their OS vendors to pre-build
   every bit of net.software, but for some odd reason everyone expects
   the Lisp vendors to do so, and to provide updates. This is generally
   followed by bitches about the Lisp distribution being bloated or too
   expensive.
   ....

My point was slightly different. In the recent RFD for comp.std.lisp
(and comp.org.lisp-user) it was mentioned that one of the next
discussion topics about Lisp standardization will be DEFSYSTEM (and
multithreading and FFI's).

It seems to me that Mark Kantrowitz's DEFSYSTEM (somebody mentioned
the 'defunits' package, but I am not familiar with it) is the only one
that currently works under *all* major implementations. Besides it is
*not* a huge piece of software (~120K of source code, ~177K compiled
with CMUCL - gnu make is 303K compiled on a Sparc).

Most important, if the vendors agree on some piece of software that is
already available they will benefit in the long run (as it happened -
it is useless to negate it - with PCL/CLOS), as will benefit the free
implementation with sporadic support as CMUCL, AKCL and CLISP.

Some time ago I made a similar comment about FFI's, but here the case
for adopting the publicly available piece of software is much
stronger.

Happy Lisping
--
Marco Antoniotti
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