asdf-ext - Extensions to the asdf primary distribution

Overview

The asdf-ext package will ultimately contain a number of useful extensions to the core asdf distribution available on the asdf cliki page. The current release of asdf-ext includes the asdf-installable file asdf-config which simplifies exporting parameters and startup initialization routines for a user. Future extensions intended include asdf-net (an updated version of asdf-install) and other methodologies for managing the relationship between static images, source files, source control and the dynamic state of a running lisp.

These releases should run on all ANSI compliant Common Lisp distributions.

asdf-config

This extension to asdf was developed to simplify exporting a module or package to a user when that module depends on external resources that are user or machine specific and want to be setup external to the system source code. If the system depends on certain data files being loaded or network systems being tested, a single top-level initialization function can be called after the system is configured.

This package is complementary to other lisp abstractions in hiding system code from machine or user specific configuration:

asdf-config adds two new operations to the asdf interface:
(asdf:oos 'asdf-config:configure-op ...) and
(asdf:oos 'asdf-config:initialize-op ...)
and modifies the behavior of the load operation.

Operation behaviors:

configure
apply system-specific parameter settings, verify the existence of any data files and the home package for the system being configured.
initialize
Ensure that the system is loaded and configured then call a registered load function for module
load
overload load for persistant-components
asdf-config also adds some components to supply data for the new operations:
system-config
Extends the basic system with new fields that provide a list of settable configuration parameters and an initialization statement to be called via initialize-op

System flow:

  1. System Developer extends the asdf-based system description using defsystem-config
    1. Provides a set of parameter names to export to the user and defparams or defvars to set within the system after it is loaded. The user parameter names can be set to specific values prior to the loading of a system.
    2. Provide an initialization function to call (optionally) that uses the parameter setting to load files, test for network resources, etc.
  2. User loads asdf-config after asdf.lisp
  3. User then sets parameters in their personal or machine initialization files that customize the system to their preferences using 'asdf-config:set-parameters or individual calls to asdf-config:set-parameter with entries being a quoted list of triples containing (:system :parameter-name value-expression)

The value is a lisp value and cannot depend on names or values from within the system being configured (the package will have to convert strings or symbols internally if necessary)

A good example of asdf-config use is the downloadable system 'langutils' at: ~eslick/langutils
The following entries are from the author's init file and langutils.asd

langutils.asd
(defsystem-config :langutils
  :description "Natural Language Toolkit"
  :version "1.0"
  ...
  :parameters ((:token-map "langutils::*default-token-map-file*")
            (:lexicon "langutils::*default-lexicon-file*")
            (:stems "langutils::*default-stems-file*")
            (:lexical-rules "langutils::*default-lexical-rule-file*")
            (:contextual-rules "langutils::*default-contextual-rule-file*")
            (:stopwords "langutils::*default-stopwords-file*")
            (:concise-stopwords "langutils::*default-concise-stopwords-file*"))
  :initialization "langutils::init-langutils")
clinit.cl
(asdf-config:set-parameters
  '((:langutils :token-map "c:/Work/lisp/my-data/langutils-token-map.sexp")
    (:langutils :stopwords "c:/Work/lisp/my-data/langutils-custom-stopwords.txt")))
 Parameter entries have the form:
(:parameter-name :my-param :default nil :required t :parameter *my-param*)
Initialization command is a string which is resolved into a function name AFTER the system has been loaded and the package and name are valid.

Utility functions:

describe-parameters ( system-name )
describes the parameters available in a loaded system
get-lisp-source-filenames ( system-name )
provides a list of paths for source files for the system. Can be slow as forces a parse of all dependencies and provides not just those for the package, but everything that system depends on.
get-all-sources ( system-name &key (reset-visited t))
Get all the source files for the package for all its dependencies. reset-visited means that you force the dependency tracker to revisit all systems. Returns asdf source file objects.
Features left to implement: