OK, there is at least one thing about which Lispers are not so smug: ASDF (Another System Definition Facility), the de factor standard for the Lisp library equivalent of Makefiles, and my post today was prompted by ANFOBA (Another Noob Effed Over By ASDF) washing ashore on comp.lang.lisp, and how I almost responded there:
Francogrex wrote:
I have been using it for ten years and I am about 50-50 now on getting it to work. I am assured it does a great job in working with a multitude of Lisps/OSes, and I can assure you it is a disaster at working with programmers.
Come back here and post console output freely, you will need help, especially because one of its great triumphs is useless error messages.
Hints:
(1) It will work. You will have to promise it your first-born, but it will work.
(2) No, PB was not joking: you have to separately push locations onto some magical special variable. Leave off a slash (or add a slash, I forget) and ASDF will take your head off, so don't do that.
(3) No, PB was not joking, the syntax is:
(asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :cl-pdf)
Why is it not (asdf:load-system :cl-pdf)? In my experience, extremely smart programmers think it astoundingly brilliant when "one function does everything!!!!", remembering the ridiculous op-code first parameter left as an exercise.
Since you asked, this is because extremely smart programmers are tone deaf to programmer productivity; they are so smart they do not even notice when they have created something unuseable, they just brain through it.
(4) ASDF has a featurebug: it loads in the wrong order in order to make McCLIM work. Don't ask. If the author of the .ASD file retreated to the desert for forty days to slave over the dependencies this will not be a problem. Otherwise do what I do: take a sledgehammer to the beast:
(asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :cl-pdf :force t)
That abandons the whole point of having a build system, but it gets ASDF to work. When for the love of god I am just trying to build this frickin thing!!! that is a nice tradeoff of compile-time vs tracking down and short-sheeting the author of ASDF.
(5) On success ASDF emits more messages than an IBM OS/360 core dump. This is so any errors will scroll well out of view and anyway stand out like a healthy thumb from the surrounding...um, other healthy thumbs. Anyway, do what I do: ignore all messages other than a backtrace and Just Try the Hello World(tm).
If you get a backtrace, Just Post It to c.l.lisp.
(6) If hello world fails, f*ck! But at least now you are a Real Lisp Programmer(tm), this is what we live with.
hth, kenny
Francogrex wrote:
Hi, I am struggling to understand how to work with asdf.
I have been using it for ten years and I am about 50-50 now on getting it to work. I am assured it does a great job in working with a multitude of Lisps/OSes, and I can assure you it is a disaster at working with programmers.
Come back here and post console output freely, you will need help, especially because one of its great triumphs is useless error messages.
Hints:
(1) It will work. You will have to promise it your first-born, but it will work.
(2) No, PB was not joking: you have to separately push locations onto some magical special variable. Leave off a slash (or add a slash, I forget) and ASDF will take your head off, so don't do that.
(3) No, PB was not joking, the syntax is:
(asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :cl-pdf)
Why is it not (asdf:load-system :cl-pdf)? In my experience, extremely smart programmers think it astoundingly brilliant when "one function does everything!!!!", remembering the ridiculous op-code first parameter left as an exercise.
Since you asked, this is because extremely smart programmers are tone deaf to programmer productivity; they are so smart they do not even notice when they have created something unuseable, they just brain through it.
(4) ASDF has a featurebug: it loads in the wrong order in order to make McCLIM work. Don't ask. If the author of the .ASD file retreated to the desert for forty days to slave over the dependencies this will not be a problem. Otherwise do what I do: take a sledgehammer to the beast:
(asdf:operate 'asdf:load-op :cl-pdf :force t)
That abandons the whole point of having a build system, but it gets ASDF to work. When for the love of god I am just trying to build this frickin thing!!! that is a nice tradeoff of compile-time vs tracking down and short-sheeting the author of ASDF.
(5) On success ASDF emits more messages than an IBM OS/360 core dump. This is so any errors will scroll well out of view and anyway stand out like a healthy thumb from the surrounding...um, other healthy thumbs. Anyway, do what I do: ignore all messages other than a backtrace and Just Try the Hello World(tm).
If you get a backtrace, Just Post It to c.l.lisp.
(6) If hello world fails, f*ck! But at least now you are a Real Lisp Programmer(tm), this is what we live with.
hth, kenny
