BINary version numbers.

[David Vinayak Wallace <Gumby@mcc.com>]

    Date: Thu, 17 Mar 88 11:34:12 est
    From: Hunter Barr <barr@pineapple.bbn.com>

    I have worked on another (ahem) brand of Lispm (the TI Explorer),
    where a special variable allowed me to decide how version numbers for
    my binaries were chosen.  I chose always to match the version of the
    source code file, overwriting when necessary.

I don't think this is a very good idea.  Look at the following case:
  You have a file called MACROS.LISP.1, containing macro definitions.
  You compile it into    MACROS.BIN.1
  You use it to compile  CODE.LISP.1, which uses macros from
      MACROS, producing  CODE.BIN.1

Well and good.

But then you modify MACROS, producing MACROS.LISP.2.  You have to
recompile CODE.LISP, but your scheme will produce CODE.LISP.1!

You can't really tell which CODE.LISP.1 you have unless you have some
extra information (even the bin file attribute list isn't good enough).
It's as bad as using unix.

Why don't you use DEFSYSTEM?