ASDF-INSTALL and external libraries
Edi Weitz <edi <at> agharta.de>
2003-09-22 09:47:38 GMT
[Is this the right mailing list for ASDF-INSTALL? I hope so.]
Hi!
I've made my packages CL-PPCRE, CL-WHO, and HTML-TEMPLATE
asdf-installable because, well, mostly because it was really easy. I
just had to edit the CLiki page and provide a PGP signature.
However, CL-GD, my latest little project, relies on the existence of
external libraries (libgd plus a couple of supporting libraries). It
also expects the user to compile some glue functions written in C
before he/she can use it.
Do you think it would make sense to make CL-GD asdf-installable as
well? What would be the best way to do it?
1. I suppose it is possible to let ASDF take care of compiling the
glue stuff[1]. I don't know how to do this but I think I can figure
that out - maybe by looking at the CL-SQL sources. I wouldn't mind
if someone provides an example, though... :)
2. CL-GD needs UFFI. How does ASDF-INSTALL cope with this?
3. Of course, there's still a lot that can go wrong - the user is on
Solaris and doesn't have gcc, the user doesn't have libgd
installed, the user does have libgd but hasn't installed, say,
libfreetype, and so one. I suppose all of these will be caught at
compile time, so maybe it's OK to just let the user run into this
situation?
(Continue reading)