[cl-pdf-devel] compile and load-time dependency on *cl-pdf-base-directory* considered harmful (was: Re: cl-pdf is moving to github)

[Marc Battyani]

Hi Dave,

On 26/3/13 21:49 , Dave Cooper wrote:
> Hi All,
>
>  I'm not sure if I should put this on this mailing list or as an Issue
> on the new Github site (where I could claim "First!" : )
Well I have no idea either and I have to look at how this works on
github. Anyway this mailing list on common-lisp.net works well and is
really low volume so probably it's not useful to change for now. That
said I would be interested to here if people have more informed opinions
on that.
> How many of you have seen this error at some point during your time
> using cl-pdf:
>
>  "Error: Font Helvetica not Found" 
>
> As you probably know, one of the things which can cause this is when
> cl-pdf is being loaded from a compiled fasl which is not in the
> location of the source codebase, and the source codebase is no longer
> available at the location where it was during compiling.
>
> So my basic question is: does anyone have suggestions what to do about
> *cl-pdf-base-directory* and *cl-typesetting-base-directory* so that a
> fasl or built runtime can be used without the depending on the
> original absolute pathname to afm/ directory, etc. still existing as
> they were during compilation? As it is currently, the full hardcoded
> pathname of the *cl-pdf-base-directory* and
> *cl-typesetting-base-directory* are baked into a compiled fasl. I
> understand this used to work from *load-truename* instead of
> *compile-file-truename*, and the hardcoding of compile-time source
> location was introduced as a "fix" for the fact that ASDF started
> using output-translations which resulted in the fasl being loaded not
> being in the source location. But this "fix" still assumes that the
> sources are always going to be available in their original location
> every time a fasl is loaded, which I consider to be a fragile assumption. 
>
> For me, the ideal solution would be: 
>
>  1. First of all, don't have any compile-time or load-time
> dependencies on these variables at all. As it is now, only chart.lisp
> in cl-pdf appears to depend on *afm-files-directories* -- couldn't
> this stuff be deferred to runtime? For cl-typesetting I'm not sure
> what are the dependencies at compile and load time, but I speculate
> that they are few. 
>
>  2. Provide an "initialize!" function for use at runtime startup,
> which is supposed to establish base directory locations for afm/
> directory etc.
> Then it would be (as it rightfully should be) the responsibility of
> any runtime application which is using cl-pdf to set the
> *-base-directory* variables and call the initialize! function as part
> of its "restart" function, much the same way as many applications
> normally have to initialize themselves at startup to find the location
> of outside resources (e.g. webserver applications have to be set with
> the location of static files for publishing, etc). 
>
> Before I go any deeper into this direction I just wanted to get any
> feedback that current users have about this issue. And let me know if
> it should be opened as an Issue on the github project or stay on this
> mailing list.
Seems good for me. Anyway as you mentioned, probably everybody had to
integrate that into some initialization function.
> Best Regards
>
>  Dave
>
> P.S. Are there plans to bring cl-typesetting to github as well,
> side-by-side with cl-pdf?
Sure! I wanted to clean them up somewhat like I have done with cl-pdf
but maybe I should move all this to github and clean it later.
I'm also planning to modernize my web framework and put it on github too
but this will take some time.

Cheers,

Marc
>
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Marc Battyani
> <marc.battyani at fractalconcept.com
> <mailto:marc.battyani at fractalconcept.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi all,
>
>     cl-pdf is moving to https://github.com/mbattyani/cl-pdf.git
>
>     Please contact me if want to have push access.
>
>     Marc
>
>
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>
>
>
>
> -- 
> My Best,
>
> Dave Cooper, Genworks Support
> david.cooper at genworks.com <mailto:david.cooper at genworks.com>,
> dave.genworks.com <http://dave.genworks.com>(skype)
> USA: 248-327-3253(o), 1-248-330-2979(mobile)
> UK: 0191 645 1699

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