Re: Common Lisp apps in Fedora

[David A. Wheeler]

Kevin Kofler:
 Ouch, we weren't aware of all these issues when we approved common-lisp-
 controller in FESCo. :-( It was sold to us as something great and working 
 perfectly. I wasn't aware that it didn't actually work at all at this time 
 and I strongly doubt the rest of FESCo was either. It makes no sense to have 
 a packaging guideline mandate using something which doesn't work.

Jerry James:
 The alternative to common-lisp-controller, for libraries at least, is
 to have lots of subpackages:...
  I can see why Debian went with
 common-lisp-controller   It helps keep insanity at bay.

Common-lisp-controller would probably be very helpful for libraries if it *did* 
work.
But it appears that mandating it was premature.

Jerry James:
 But I think we need to have an escape clause for applications, and
 also for libraries that take a significant amount of time/space to
 compile.

No escape clause needed for applications.
The 2nd sentence of: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Lisp
This document does not describe conventions and customs for application 
programs that are written in Common Lisp.

I think it should be backed down until it's *really* fixed
(awakening upstream as necessary).

--- David A. Wheeler

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Re: Common Lisp apps in Fedora

[David A. Wheeler]

On 01/04/2010 05:29 PM, Jerry James wrote:
 One of the first issues we'll have to face is the use of 
 common-lisp-controller.
 First, it postpones compilation to the first time the application is
 executed by a particular Common Lisp engine.  For the application I
 packaged, PVS [2], compilation takes a significant amount of time.
 This approach may be fine for small libraries and applications, but
 will it really scale up to the some of the big applications people
 want to package?

No.  That'd be rediculous; big CL applications can take a LONG time to compile,
and compilation usually requires lots of memory (even if the final application 
doesn't).

Fedora has lots of applications written in many other compiled languages
like C and C++, and they aren't distributed *only* as source code.  Instead,
people expect that when they download the binary they'll get a pre-compiled,
ready-to-go version. I think the same should be true for big Common Lisp (CL)
applications. If you want a distribution that requires you to recompile
*everything* from scratch, go to Gentoo or similar.

There should be pre-compiled versions of large CL applications, as
maxima-sbcl is right now and the upcoming pvs-sbcl will be.

Alexander Kahl:
 Are you (or is anyone else here) interested in founding a Common Lisp SIG?

I'm interested.

--- David A. Wheeler 

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