Subject: [bug#36131] Add Multiple Common Lisp Packages

From: Katherine Cox-Buday <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2019 12:56:11 -0500

Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

> Hello Katherine,
>
> Thanks for this patch series!

You bet! Power to the Guix :)

> I’ve applied all of them until #7 included (fare-utils), fixing minor
> issues that ‘guix lint’ reported.

Thank you, and sorry for the linting issues. I get busy and then rushed
and I make these stupid mistakes.

> I’d be grateful if someone reading this could do their share of
> review/apply work!  :-)
>
> I noticed that ‘ecl-hu.dwim.asdf’ and ‘ecl-rt’ fail to build, so I
> couldn’t test all the ‘ecl-*’ variants.  Could you take a look at these
> two packages?

I focused on the SBCL packages and then retroactively went back and
added all the ECL packages, trying to be a good citizen. In retrospect,
this was not a good idea. Common Lisp code is not guaranteed to work
across runtimes.

If you're OK with it, I would just go ahead and delete any ECL package
that doesn't immediately work. I can do this myself, but I'm currently
on holiday and won't be able to take a look for another week and a half.

> More generally, does it make sense to have ECL variants for each and
> every package?  Or should we trim that down?  I’m under the impression
> that ECL is typically used with rather small code bases since it’s meant
> to be embedded, but then I’m not a Common Lisper.

I think ECL is used outside embedded contexts, but I haven't found a
reason to use it yet. If I remember correctly, I think one compiles
faster than the other, and the other runs faster, so some people switch
between the two when developing and then deploying.

-- 
Katherine