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Commit 317998be authored by Francois-Rene Rideau's avatar Francois-Rene Rideau
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</p>
<a id="what_it_is"></a>
<h3>What it is</h3>
<p>ASDF 3 contains two parts: <tt>asdf/defsystem</tt> and <tt>uiop</tt>.
</p>
<p><tt>asdf/defsystem</tt>,
is a tool to describe how Lisp source code is organized in systems,
and how to build a system in term of actions that depend on previous actions.
</p>
<p>It is roughly what Common Lisp hackers use to build software
where C hackers might use GNU <tt>Make</tt>.
</p>
<p>ASDF stands for <em>A</em>nother <em>S</em>ystem <em>D</em>efinition <em>F</em>acility,
in the continuity of the Lisp <tt>DEFSYSTEM</tt> of yore.
</p>
<p><tt>uiop</tt>,
also known as <tt>asdf/driver</tt>,
the Utilities for Implementation- and OS- Portability,
is a Common Lisp portability library and runtime support system
that helps you write Common Lisp software in a portable way.
</p>
<p>In addition to many general-purpose Lisp utilities,
it notably provides portable abstractions to
gloss over implementation quirks, support hot-upgrade of code,
manipulate pathnames, create programs, use command-line arguments,
access the environment, use the filesystem,
call other programs and parse their output,
compile Lisp code, muffle conditions, or configure Lisp software.
See its
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;a=blob;f=uiop/README;hb=HEAD;js=1">README</a>.
<p>ASDF 3 contains two parts: <tt>asdf/defsystem</tt> and <tt>uiop</tt>.
</p>
<dl>
<dt><tt>asdf/defsystem</tt></dt>
<dd>
<p>is a tool to describe how Lisp source code is organized in systems,
and how to build a system in term of actions that depend on previous actions.
</p>
<p>
Typical actions consist in compiling a Lisp source file (if not up to date)
and loading the resulting compilation output (if not both loaded and up to date).
And you must typically compile and load files that define packages, macros, variables,
before you may compile and load other files that use them.
</p>
<p>It is roughly what Common Lisp hackers use to build and load software
where C hackers might use GNU <tt>Make</tt> to build software and
<tt>ld.so</tt> to load it.
</p>
<p><tt>asdf/defsystem</tt> is the part that people usually refer to as <tt>ASDF</tt>,
with <tt>uiop</tt> being only a supporting library,
that happens to be distributed at the same time, by necessity.
</p>
</dd>
<dt><tt>uiop</tt></dt>
<dd>
<p>also known as <tt>asdf/driver</tt>,
the Utilities for Implementation- and OS- Portability,
is a Common Lisp portability library and runtime support system
that helps you write Common Lisp software in a portable way.
</p>
<p>In addition to many general-purpose Lisp utilities,
it notably provides portable abstractions to
gloss over implementation quirks, support hot-upgrade of code,
manipulate pathnames, create programs, use command-line arguments,
access the environment, use the filesystem,
call other programs and parse their output,
compile Lisp code, muffle conditions, or configure Lisp software.
See its
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;a=blob;f=uiop/README;hb=HEAD;js=1">README</a>.
</p>
<p><tt>uiop</tt> is distributed as part of the <tt>ASDF</tt>,
its source code is transcluded in the single-file <tt>asdf.lisp</tt> being distributed
and the precompiled fasls provided by Lisp implementations.
<tt>ASDF</tt> relies heavily on it for its portability layer and runtime support,
particularly so as to handle pathnames and filesystem access.
<tt>uiop</tt> is useful on its own and can also be compiled and distributed separately.
</p>
</dd>
</dl>
<a id="what_it_is_not"></a>
<h3>What it is not</h3>
<p>ASDF will <em>not</em> download missing software components for you.
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