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<title>ASDF - Another System Definition Facility</title>
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<a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/" title="ASDF Homepage">
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<h2>ASDF</h2><h4>Another System Definition Facility</h4>
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<div class="system-links">
<ul>
<li><a href="#what_it_is">What it is</a></li>
<li><a href="#what_it_is_not">What it is not</a></li>
<li><a href="#implementations">Supported Implementations</a></li>
Francois-Rene Rideau
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<li><a href="#examples">Examples</a></li>
<li><a href="#documentation">Documentation</a></li>
<li><a href="#downloads">Getting it</a></li>
<li><a href="#bugs">Reporting Bugs</a></li>
<li><a href="#mailing-lists">Mailing Lists</a></li>
<li><a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;a=log"
>Changelog</a></li>
</ul>
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<div class="contents">
<a id="ASDF 2"></a>
<h3>ASDF 2</h3>
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<p>ASDF 2, initially released on May 31st 2010,
is the current successor of Daniel Barlow's ASDF,
made more portable and more robust, with a somewhat improved API.
It has since been widely adopted by the CL community,
and is actively maintained.
<a id="what_it_is"></a>
<h3>What it is</h3>
<p>ASDF is a tool for describing how source files are organized:
what depends on which and when.
</p>
<p>It is roughly what Common Lisp hackers use to build software
where C hackers would use say GNU Make.
</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 DEFSYSTEM of yore.
</p>
<a id="what_it_is_not"></a>
<h3>What it is not</h3>
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<p>ASDF will <em>not</em> download missing software components for you.
For that, you want <a href="http://quicklisp.org/">Quicklisp</a>,
that builds upon ASDF, and is great for pulling and installing
tarballs of packages you may depend upon;
we also recommend <a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/clbuild/">clbuild</a>,
that now builds upon Quicklisp, as a great tool for pulling from version control
packages you need to modify or want to contribute to.
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We recommend you should <em>not</em> use ASDF-Install anymore,
as it is an older similar piece of software that is both unmaintained and obsolete.
</p><p>
If you're unsatisfied with ASDF, other actively maintained build systems for Common-Lisp
that may or may not satisfy you include:
François-René Rideau's
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/xcvb/">XCVB</a>
(trying to build object and image files deterministically and in parallel),
or its polar opposite,
Drew McDermott's
<a href="http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/">YTools</a>
(trying maintain coherence of the current Lisp image at a fine grain).
Older systems that are not maintained anymore include
Mark Kantrowitz's <a href="http://www.cliki.net/mk-defsystem">mk-defsystem</a>
(free software successor of the old proprietary DEFSYSTEM's and predecessor of ASDF),
Sean Ross's <a href="http://sean-ross.blogspot.com/search/label/mudballs">mudballs</a>
(aborted attempt at making things cleaner than in ASDF),
Peter Jetter's <a href="http://www.cliki.net/faslpath">faslpath</a>
(a much simpler system integrating mapping packages to files),
Alexander Kahl's <a href="http://www.cliki.net/evol">evol</a>
(a reimplementation of the GNU autotools stack in Lisp),
and probably more.
However, none of these systems seems to ever have had the traction of ASDF.
</p>
<a id="implmementations"></a>
<h3>Supported Implementations</h3>
<p>ASDF 2 now supports all CL implementations
that seem to have any current user base.
</p><p>
Most implementations provide ASDF 2 as a module,
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and you can simply <tt>(require "asdf")</tt>.
(All of them but CLISP also accept
<tt>:asdf</tt>, <tt>"ASDF"</tt> or <tt>'asdf</tt> as an argument.)
</p><p>
A few implementations don't provide ASDF yet,
but have announced they will in their next release.
As for remaining implementations,
they are obsolete and/or mostly unmaintained;
still ASDF 2 supports them if you load it manually,
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though there might never be a next release
to provide it through <tt>require</tt>.
</p>
<table>
<tr><th></th>
<th align="left">Provide "asdf"</th>
<th align="left">Will provide it</th>
<th align="left">Obsolete</th></tr>
<tr><th align="left">Free</th>
<td align="left">abcl ccl clisp cmucl ecl sbcl xcl</td>
<td> </td>
<td align="left">gcl mcl</td></tr>
<tr><th align="left">Proprietary</th>
<td align="left">allegro</td>
<td align="left">lispworks scl</td>
<td align="left">cormanlisp genera</td></tr>
</table>
<!-- Note to self:
The maintainers of the following implementations follow asdf-announce:
allegro Gary King <gwking@franz.com>
clisp (sds)
ecl (juanjo)
The maintainers of the following implementations require direct notification:
abcl ccl cmucl gcl lispworks sbcl scl xcl
Armed Bear <armedbear-devel@common-lisp.net>,
openmcl-devel@clozure.com,
cmucl-imp@cons.org,
gcl-devel@gnu.org,
lisp-support@lispworks.com,
SBCL Devel-list <sbcl-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>,
Douglas Crosher <dtc3@scieneer.com>,
Peter Graves <gnooth@gmail.com>
-->
<p>
If there is an old or new implementation that we are missing,
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it shouldn't be hard to adapt ASDF to support it.
Ask us!
</p>
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<a id="examples"></a>
<h3>Examples</h3>
<p>Download any of the many packages available through
<a href="http://quicklisp.org/">Quicklisp</a>
to see as many examples.</p>
<a id="documentation"></a>
<h3>Documentation</h3>
<p>You can read our manual:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="asdf.html">as one HTML file</a></li>
<li><a href="asdf/">split into one HTML file per section</a></li>
<li><a href="asdf.pdf">as a PDF document</a></li>
<li><a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;a=blob;f=doc/asdf.texinfo">as texinfo source</a></li>
</ul>
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<p>Regarding the internal design of ASDF in general,
and the work we did on ASDF 2,
see the last draft version of our paper for
<a href="http://www.international-lisp-conference.org/2010/index">ILC 2010</a>,
<cite><a href="ilc2010draft.pdf"
>Evolving ASDF: More Cooperation, Less Coordination</a></cite></p>
<p>Finally, while the manual covers all the basics,
some advanced or new features remain underdocumented.
Please contact our mailing-list (see below)
for any issue that isn't well-documented enough.
</p>
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<a id="downloads"></a>
<h3>Getting it</h3>
<p>Though they may lag behind the version here, ASDF comes bundled with most Lisps.
To get the greatest and latest, you can:
</p>
<ul>
<li>download just the latest <em>release</em> source for
<!--<a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;a=blob_plain;tag=RELEASE;f=asdf.lisp">asdf.lisp</a>,-->
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/asdf.lisp">asdf.lisp</a>;
</li>
<li>download the latest <em>release</em>
<!--<a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;tag=RELEASE;a=snapshot;sf=tgz">tarball</a>,-->
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/asdf.tar.gz">tarball</a>
to get all bells and whistles;
</li>
<li>download just the latest <em>development</em> source from our git repository:
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git;a=blob_plain;f=asdf.lisp;hb=HEAD">asdf.lisp</a>
</li>
<li>pull the latest <em>development</em> tree from our git repository
<pre>git clone git://common-lisp.net/projects/asdf/asdf.git</pre>
(note that our "master" branch is for current development;
get our "release" branch for the latest stable release.);
</li>
<li>browse the latest <em>development</em> tree from our git repository:
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/gitweb?p=projects/asdf/asdf.git">gitweb</a>
</li>
<li>download the tarball of a past release:
<a href="http://common-lisp.net/project/asdf/archives/">archives</a>
</li></ul>
<a id="bugs">
<h3>Reporting Bugs</h3>
<p>To report bugs, you can use our
<a href="https://launchpad.net/asdf/">launchpad project</a>.
If you're unsure about the bug or want to discuss how to fix it,
you can send email to the project mailing-list below.
</p>
<a id="mailing-lists"></a>
<h3>Mailing Lists</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asdf-devel">asdf-devel</a>:
A list for questions, suggestions, bug reports, patches, and so on.
It's for everyone and everything. Please join the conversation!
</li>
<li><a href="http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asdf-announce">asdf-announce</a>:
A low-volume mailing-list for announcements only, mostly regarding new releases.
Posting is restricted to project administrators and to important notices.
Please subscribe to it if you're a Lisp implementation or distribution vendor,
who needs to know when to upgrade the ASDF you distribute,
but are otherwise not interested in day to day design and development.
</li></ul>
<h3>Contributing</h3>
<p>Join our mailing list, check the code out from git,
send questions, ideas and patches!
</p>
<a id="news"></a>
<h3>What is happening</h3>
<dl>
<dd>François-René Rideau is de facto maintainer,
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with notable contributions from Robert P. Goldman,
Juanjo Garcia-Ripoll and James Anderson.
ASDF 2 released
with many clean-ups, better configurability
and updated documentation.
</dd>
<dt>May 2006 to November 2009</dt>
<dd>Gary King is de facto maintainer,
with notable contributions from
Robert P. Goldman, Nikodemus Siivola, Christophe Rhodes, Daniel Herring.
Many small features and bug fixes,
moving to using git and common-lisp.net.
</dd>
<dt>May 2004 to April 2006</dt>
<dd>Christophe Rhodes is de facto maintainer,
with notable contributions from
Nikodemus Siivola, Peter Van Eynde, Edi Weitz, Kevin Rosenberg.
The system made more robust, a few more features.
<dt>August 2001 to May 2004</dt>
<dd>Developed by Daniel Barlow, with notable contributions from
Christophe Rhodes, Kevin Rosenberg, Edi Weitz, Rahul Jain.
<dt>August 2001</dt>
<dd>Created by Daniel Barlow</dd>
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<p><span class="copyright"Copyright © 2001-2011 Daniel Barlow and contributors</span></p>
<p>ASDF has an <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php">MIT style</a> license</p>
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<div id="timestamp">Last updated 2011-11-21</div>
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