Clon 1.0b24 is out (important)

I’m happy to announce the release of the next beta version of Clon , the Common Lisp / Command-Line Options Nuker. This release contains few functional changes, but a lot of infrastructure ones, plus very important and backward-incompatible modifications. So if you’re a Clon user, please read on.

First of all, a huge revamp of the library’s infrastructure (package hierarchy, ASDF systems, and Makefiles) has occurred. A large portion of this work is actually not mine, but Faré’s (big thanks to him, ‘cause the level of ASDF expertise required just means that I couldn’t have done that by myself). The purpose here was twofold: first, remove all logic from the ASDF files (so that other system managers could be used; not sure that’s actually useful right now) and second, split the library in two: the core, basic functionality and the non-standard platform-dependent bells and whistles (read: termio support). The result is that Clon now comes with 4 different ASDF systems. A setup system allows you to configure some stuff prior to loading the library, a core system allows you to load only the basic functionality and the regular one loads everything, autodetecting platform-dependent features as before. The fourth system is auxiliary and not to be used by hand. All of this is properly documented. For a code maniac like me, this new infrastructure is much more satisfactory, and I’ve learned a lot about ASDF less known features.

Next, I’ve moved the repository to Github. Please update your links! It seems that I’ve lost all my former tags in the process, but oh well…Only the Git repo has moved. The main Clon web page still contains the full history of tarballs, the preformatted documentation, and will continue to do so in the future.

Finally (I’ve kept this to myself until the last minute because I’m scared like hell to tell): I’ve changed the systems and packages names… The com.dvlsoft prefix has been replaced with net.didierverna. All other libraries of mine will eventually endure the same surgery. It’s for the best, I apologize for it and I swear I will never ever do that again, ever (fingers crossed behind my back).

So what’s next? Before considering an official 1.0 release, there are two things that I want to do. First, cleanup some remaining “fixmes” and some shaky error handling. Second, provide an even simpler way of using Clon than what the Quick Start chapter in the doc demonstrates. The idea is to just implement a main function with keyword arguments, and those arguments magically become command-line options.

A side-effect of this work is that Declt now chokes on Clon, because some ASDF features that it doesn’t understand are in use. So Declt has a couple of new challenges ahead, and you should expect a new release in the weeks to come.