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Commit 71883b6f authored by Francois-Rene Rideau's avatar Francois-Rene Rideau
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Tell in uiop/README.md when to use UIOP or not

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...@@ -155,6 +155,47 @@ be moved from one internal package to the other, without notification. ...@@ -155,6 +155,47 @@ be moved from one internal package to the other, without notification.
They have in the past and will in the future. They have in the past and will in the future.
When to use UIOP
----------------
UIOP is the ideal tool to use when:
* You need utilities that are always available,
portably, with no installation needed.
* You work in a cooperative environment, where the user is a developer
who understands what he's doing and is trusted not to be malicious.
* You are writing a build system, build tools, developer-facing tools.
* You are writing bootstrap scripts, in which you cannot suppose
that any third-party library has been installed (yet),
much less a C compiler or any external tool.
* You are trying to make existing Common Lisp code more robust and portable,
or replacing developer "scripts"
(in shell, perl, python, ruby, js, and other blub languages)
with Common Lisp code, but without concerns about
either end-user usability or security
(at the very least, you, not end-users, are fully controlling pathnames,
and filtering off or portably encoding any unusual character, etc.)
UIOP is the wrong tool when:
* You need to have total control on syscalls,
to use special characters in pathnames, to handle symlinks yourself,
or otherwise to have low-level system access.
* You work in an adversarial environment, where some users are stupid,
uneducated or outright malicious, and cannot be trusted not to try and
abuse the system with pathnames, symlinks, race conditions, etc.
(or be tricked into it by attackers).
* You are writing end-user facing tools that pass along user-provided
pathnames, with bad usability implications if a user tries to use weird
pathnames, or even security implications if an attackers crafts bad
pathnames or filesystem setups.
In those latter cases, we recommend you use IOlib, or osicat,
or some similar library that isn't as portable as UIOP,
but provides fine-grained control over low-level system access.
Also, please use extreme caution.
Some history Some history
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