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From: Steffen Schulz on 23 Jan 2010 10:19

Hi,


I started to learn Lisp a few weeks ago. I installed a few packages and wrote
some modifications/additions. Naturally, I was also curious why such an
appearantly powerful system is used so little.

I'm pretty sure I stumbled on one of the reasons today, while trying to deploy
my work on a different machine: Much worse than the lack of certain libraries
and tools, I think, is the lack of a well-maintained Lisp distribution.


- asdf-install slime pulls slime from 2006
- asdf-install swank pulls swank from 2008
- some package's tests suites get pulled in automatically and pull in more
unrequested stuff like stefil and swank.
- it appears there is no package version matching, so getting a working system
out of this involves a lot of luck
- people don't seem to merge patches a lot...the nuclblog author wrote useful
additions to hunchentoot, but they are maintained separatedly, if at all..


In the end, I have to resolve any dependencies by hand, visit the individual
websites and keep track of their latest tarball, svn, cvs, darcs or git
repository.

Debian also ships quite a bit of cl packages, but of course they don't have all
of them. I would end up with a mixture of current and older packages, which is
at least as complicated as finding the most recent version of all of them.


Did I miss something? Is there a hidden package server that you only tell your
friends about? Do you all do the package management on your own?


/steffen
From: Tamas K Papp on 23 Jan 2010 10:42
On Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:19:57 +0000, Steffen Schulz wrote:

> - some package's tests suites get pulled in automatically and pull
> in more unrequested stuff like stefil and swank.

"Unrequested stuff" is usually dependencies. Test suites are useful:
even if you don't run them, they have a lot of good examples.

> - it appears there is no package version matching, so getting a
> working system out of this involves a lot of luck

True. Most people just use the latest version of everything.

> - people don't seem to merge patches a lot...the nuclblog author
> wrote useful additions to hunchentoot, but they are maintained
> separatedly, if at all..

I would not say this in general, most people are happy to get patches
(but may not merge them promptly---I also plead guilty in this matter :-)

> In the end, I have to resolve any dependencies by hand, visit the
> individual websites and keep track of their latest tarball, svn, cvs,
> darcs or git repository.

clbuild can automate this for you, and does a lot of other stuff (eg
download and compile SBCL, etc).

> Did I miss something? Is there a hidden package server that you only
> tell your friends about? Do you all do the package management on your
> own?

There are several attempts, but none of them does everything you want.
Things are in development, but don't expect a revolution in the short
run. That said, I think clbuild is pretty good, has everything but
version matching.

Tamas
From: Tim Bradshaw on 23 Jan 2010 10:56
On 2010-01-23 15:19:57 +0000, Steffen Schulz said:

> I'm pretty sure I stumbled on one of the reasons today, while trying to deploy
> my work on a different machine: Much worse than the lack of certain libraries
> and tools, I think, is the lack of a well-maintained Lisp distribution

The reasons Lisp is not popular vary over time. The only constant is
that there will always *be* a reason.

From: Pascal J. Bourguignon on 23 Jan 2010 12:46
Steffen Schulz <sf+lisp(a)cbg.dyndns.org> writes:

> Did I miss something?

No.


> Is there a hidden package server that you only tell your
> friends about?

No.


> Do you all do the package management on your own?

Basically, yes.



You're right, the situation is a mess.

There's asdf-install/cliki.net and asdf, but they have the drawbacks
you noted (and some more).

There are newer and different attempts, such as xcvb, cl-build, libcl,
etc, but AFAIK, nothing is comprehensive and definitive.

You might want to have a look at libcl, it's the approach I take for
the dependencies of my own lisp application.

But really, we were waiting for somebody like you, motivated to solve
this mess with a great definite solution. Serriously.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
From: Raffael Cavallaro on 23 Jan 2010 18:13
On 2010-01-23 10:19:57 -0500, Steffen Schulz said:

> I'm pretty sure I stumbled on one of the reasons today, while trying to deploy
> my work on a different machine: Much worse than the lack of certain libraries
> and tools, I think, is the lack of a well-maintained Lisp distribution.

Don't confuse Common Lisp the language with whatever free
implementation you're using. There are non-free implementations of
common lisp that don't have these sorts of configuration issues - they
more or less just work, which is a big part of what their users are
paying for.

--
Raffael Cavallaro

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