TODO

* Decree that versions older than 2 years are not supported;
   yet, keep supporting an upgrade from whatever vendors provide
   — so push them to provide recent stuff.
** Already, swank-asdf doesn't support anything older than 2.014.6
   (as provided by the first 2011 iteration of Quicklisp), and
   I (fare) am pushing for swank-asdf to not support anything older
   than 3.1.2 (since no maintained implementation has anything older,
   with the LispWorks 7.0 release being last to upgrade, in May 2015;
   or CLISP hg in May 2016, though it hasn't been released since 2010).
** Maybe remove old versions from upgrade tests; or maybe not:
   if we support old versions in any way,
   it should be for upgrade only, and "punt" is acceptable.
** Maybe remove upgrade from antique ASDF altogether.
   Clear all the code in the header, and/or
   move a few elements to asdf/upgrade.
** Upgrade tests might be split in two test sets: short and long.
** Make tests stateless and/or make any modifications private,
   so that they can be run in parallel.

* Moving toward cross-compilation (ASDF 3.2? 4?)
   This would allow to get most of the benefits of XCVB
   (reproducibility, scalability, applicability to mobile platforms, etc.),
   except without the backward incompatibility of XCVB.
   NB: the MOCL author would benefit a lot, and might chip in.
** Need to further split asdf:perform in two parts:
   A part that runs on the host and specifies (as SEXP or string to read)
   forms that must be evaluated on the target machine, not the host:
   (asdf:perform-forms target operation component &key input-files output-files)
   The default implementation can fallback to running the
   (asdf:perform operation component) on the target.
   To ensure isolation, it would run in an isolated process in which
   just the specially crafted operation and component objects are defined,
   though the defsystem-depends-on dependencies are also loaded;
   the action would be run in a temporary directory, that would contain
   only a read-only copy of the declared input-files, and some writable
   output directory for the output files, that would afterwards be
   copied to their actual destination.

   ;; null means the target is the current host.
   ;; Or should the base class be plan-traversal or such?
   (defmethod perform-form ((target null) operation component)
     ;; :host means execute on the host. () is empty options.
     `(:host () (asdf:perform ',op ',comp)))

   ;; external-target means a cross compiler that we spawn.
   (defmethod perform-form ((target external-target) operation component)
     `(:target ;; who is to execute that? the target Lisp.
       ;; options for the performing system:
       (:depends-on ,(defsystem-dependencies
                      (component-system component)))
       ;; The actual forms to evaluate
       (asdf:perform ,(fake-operation-form operation)
                     ,(fake-component-form component))))

   By specifying :host-common-lisp you can have forms run on the host.
   By specifying :run-program, you can spawn a subprocess without
   having to first spawn a Lisp that will call run-program. etc.

   The other way around the default perform method could be:

   (defmethod perform ((o t) (c t))
     (let ((forms (perform-forms nil o c)))
       (if (equal forms
                  `((asdf:perform ',o ',c)))
           (error "Missing perform method on ..." ...)
           (map () 'eval-thunk forms))))

   Note that in the general case, there are multiple forms,
   that must be provided on the command line somehow
   (see the lisp-invocation system and also how cl-launch does it),
   with packages necessary to read latter forms being
   created by former forms, so you cannot read everything in one go.
   ASDF or at least UIOP should probably be provided in the target
   image by default, anyway, without needing to be explicitly specified.
   A more declarative interface to needing the defsystem-deps
   is probably useful.
** A real cross-compiling backend that works the way of XCVB
   would need to compute a complete graph for the plan,
   which could be achieved by inheriting from the code in POIU.
   Thinking about it, the cross-compiling target object
   could actually be the same as the plan object.
   The basic case of in-image execution would need to be in ASDF,
   while the actual cross-compilation case would be in an extension.
** Audit all the current specializers of perform, and offer them a new way;
   they can keep the perform method to run on older versions of ASDF.
** Modify SBCL and other implementations so they provide UIOP
   independently from ASDF?
** The default perform-plan method could iterate over pre-computed forms,
   in a way that does not involve the ASDF object model anymore,
   making ASDF friendlier to self-upgrades.
   Then, ASDF wouldn't need to be concatenated during upgrade
   — but should still concatenate for bootstrap purposes,
   when require'ing it as an implementation-provided module,
   compiling from ASDF 2, or otherwise distributing as a single file.

* Implementation bugs
** CMUCL has bugs:
*** In ASDF 2.32.13, sibling-dependencies is renamed to sideway-dependencies
    in defclass component, a superclass of system, and upgrade from
    2.32 or earlier thus fails with
    Error in function KERNEL:CLASS-TYPEP:  Class is currently invalid:
    #<KERNEL::STANDARD-CLASS ASDF/SYSTEM:SYSTEM {58398145}>
    in a direct call from ASDF/FIND-SYSTEM:LOCATE-SYSTEM,
    which suggests CMUCL's PCL fails to finalize classes properly.
*** Non-default optimize settings may or may not subtly break PCL.
    For the longest time (from 2.26.136 to 3.1.0.42), ASDF had:
    (declaim (optimize (speed 1) (safety 3) (debug 3)))
    This form may or may not work around that breakage in some cases:
    (setf c::top-level-lambda-max 0)
*** At some point there was massive breakage due to uninitialized slots
    as revealed in 3.1.0.37 with
    make t l=cmucl t=test-encodings.script
    which was a different PCL bug from the above (without same workaround)
    but possibly also triggered by the non-standard declaim.
*** `#5(1 ,@`(2 3)))` returns #(1 2 3),
     rather than #(1 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3) or even better #(1 2 3 3 3).
*** It purports to support Unicode, but it has only 16-bit characters.
   Note that (subtypep 'character 'base-char) says T -- everything is a base char(!)

** SCL has bugs:
*** it doesn't like run-program from a modified directory?
*** it somehow pushes :non-base-chars-exist-p even though +non-base-chars-exist-p+ is NIL???

** XCL has bad bugs:
*** make-pathname doesn't handle :type nil properly and
    has massive lossage in logical-pathname support.
*** If using block () and return in search-for-system-definition
    instead of return-from, XCL mistakenly has the return jump
    to the end of the try function or something.
*** It also takes a long time for errors to propagate into a debugging REPL —
     Maybe O(n^3) behavior or worse in walking the C++ stack?
*** The backtrace frames may contains unprintable objects.
*** make-pathname fails to copy the version from the defaults.
*** (make-pathname :host "ASDFTEST" :directory '(:absolute "system2" "module4")
      :name nil :type nil) fails to handle the logical-pathname-ness of ASDFTEST.
*** `#5(1 ,@`(2 3)))` returns #(1 2 3),
     rather than #(1 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3) or even better #(1 2 3 3 3).
*** XCL recognizes :unspecific for a pathname type,
   but prints the namestring with a dot separator!
   (make-pathname :name "foo" :type :unspecific) ==> #P"foo."
    If bug is ever fixed, upgrade *unspecific-pathname-type* in uiop/pathname.
*** XCL doesn't properly process files the name of which contains a *

** GCL is almost working again; but implementation bugs remain.
   See Francois-Rene Rideau's messages on gcl-devel starting November 2013.
*** Missing support for many UIOP functions:
   combine-fasls, get-optimization-settings...
*** ASDF may now be included for (require "asdf") and (require "ASDF"),
    but how to compile it properly?
*** GCL fails to properly compile ASDF with the default compilation settings,
   but works with those in script-support.lisp.
   Symptoms when trying to load asdf.o:
   Signalled by "AN ANONYMOUS FUNCTION".
   INTERNAL-SIMPLE-ERROR: The package named ASDF/INTERFACE, does not exist
*** Another GCL compiler bug:
   when I changed the definition of getcwd from
   (let ((*default-pathname-defaults* #p"")) (truename #p"")) to
   (let ((*default-pathname-defaults* *nil-pathname*)) (truename *nil-pathname*))
   to guard against e.g. a logical-pathname context while loading asdf
   and parsing #p"", calls to getcwd result in a segfault.
*** An another bug: gcl refuses dynamic-extent declaration on functions.
   uiop/stream.lisp:         #-gcl (declare (dynamic-extent ,@(when
   before `(#',beforef)) ,@(when after `(#',afterf))))
*** (typep p 'logical-pathname) should be T if p has a logical-pathname host.
*** apropos is case-sensitive and returns a same symbol many times
   (presumably once per package where it is present,
   instead of just once for its home package)
*** compile-file fails to return proper secondary values in case of non-style WARNING.
*** (pathname-directory #p"foo/") is incorrectly ("foo") instead of (:RELATIVE "foo")
*** Do whatever it takes to pass the asdf tests, add the above?
*** Trying to uiop:slurp-stream-forms from a stream with #+(or) :foo
   (or read-file-forms from an file with same) results in an error,
   rather than nil. This is probably a bug in #+ processing.
   Unhappily, debian creates such a file in
   /etc/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/01-common-lisp-controller.conf
*** Tests that try to catch an error fail (but catching a warning succeeds),
   which suggests brokenness in handler-bind and/or error.
*** COMPILE-FILE* fails due to handler-bind error in
   with-muffled-compiler-conditions or so.
*** `#5(1 ,@`(2 3)))` returns #(1 2 3),
     rather than #(1 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3) or even better #(1 2 3 3 3).
*** (DIRECTORY #p"*.*") fails to match files with pathname type NIL.
*** GCL doesn't properly process files the name of which contains a *

** ABCL has a few bugs.
*** ABCL fails the timestamp propagation test.
*** `#5(1 ,@`(2 3)))` returns #(1 2 3),
   rather than #(1 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3) or even better #(1 2 3 3 3).
*** ABCL doesn't properly process files the name of which contains a *

** ECL has issues with its bundles.
   On MacOS X, test-bundle.script fails.
*** ECL doesn't properly process files the name of which contains a *

** Allegro fails to parse argv the correct Windows way wrt C++ escaping conventions.
   Is this (still) the case? What about LispWorks? Other implementations?

* Design & Implement some out-of-line configuration mechanism for various options?
  i.e. let configuration files override some variables around some actions.
** Could be used to override new backward-incompatible defaults
   (e.g. for operation propagation, deferred warnings, etc.)
** Use the above to bind variable around performing of actions.

* Improve robustness
** Fix bugs on http://bugs.launchpad.net/asdf/+bugs
*** fix directory-files to not return directories on CCL, etc. Add tests.
*** have a better defsystem form verifier - see lp#1007335
*** have a function verify-strict-asd that can verify a asd is pure lp#541562
   Then if it passes, use load-strict-asd.
   If not, optionally issue a warning. Start migrating people toward that.
** Include tests for prebuilt-system in test-bundle and in test-program.
** Test that a package-system secondary system is properly superseded
   when the primary system is redefined.

* Learn to use cl-grid-test
** So we can easily make sure ASDF changes don't break stuff,
   and that breakage gets fixed quickly.
** So we see if ASDF-USER can :use most (all?) of UIOP.
  SB-GROVEL used (until 25c1769 from 2013-02-23) to :use both ASDF and
  SB-EXT, which prevents ASDF from exporting RUN-PROGRAM, but
  should not be a problem with ASDF-USER :use'ing UIOP.
  A run of quicklisp is necessary, with an eye also for warnings
  from .asd's that might be overriding definitions in UIOP(!)

* Diagnostics
** have a mode to explain WHY a component needs to be recompiled.
** A ``dry run'' of an operation can be made with the following form:
     (let ((asdf:*verbose-out* *standard-output*))
       (loop :for (op . comp) :in
         (asdf/plan:plan-actions
          (asdf/plan:make-plan nil '<operation-name> '<system-name> :force t))
         :do (asdf:explain op comp)))
   What would be a nice interface for this functionality?

* have with-input-file use the encodings mechanism?
** Import asdf-encodings into UIOP? Sounds a lot of code for no users.

* have a single test .asd that tests as many features as possible, use it for upgrade test.

* Bug found by fe[nl]ix: infinite loop if the definitions in an asd file
  are not in strict defsystem-depends-on dependency order.
** At least document the issue.
** Real solution: defer parsing and evaluation of defsystem forms?
   Or simply detect circularity and issue an appropriate error?

* Implement proper incrementality for defsystem-depends-on.
** For proper incremental redefinitions, systems probably need to
   depend-on (load-asd-op . primary-system) which itself will
   depend-on all the load-op of defsystem-depends-on in that file.
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/asdf/+bug/1500578

* Include some ABL test for stassats's (now obsolete?) thing:
   (asdf:enable-asdf-binary-locations-compatibility
   :centralize-lisp-binaries t :default-toplevel-directory *fasl-dir*)
** Or deprecate and remove ABL compatibility altogether? Move it to contrib?
   No one has been using ASDF1 for years.
   There is no ABL to be compatible with —
   is anyone still using the compatibility mode?
   Maybe issue a warning, then a cerror, before to remove the code?

* Make load-op a generic operation that selects the proper strategy?
  for each system, module or file, according to component properties and user-configuration:
  compile the lisp file then load the fasl (load-fasl-op on a cl-source-file),
  load the lisp file without compiling (load-source-op),
  compile all files for the system, link them and load the result
   (load-fasl-op on the system),
  compile all files for the system *and* its dependencies, link and load (monolithic-load-fasl-op),
  concatenate all files for the system, then load the result (load-concatenated-source-op),
  concatenate all files for the system, then link them and load the result (load-compiled-concatenated-op),
  concatenate all files for the system *and* its dependencies, link and load (monolithic-load-compiled-concatenated-op).

* operation cleanup?
** Kill backward-compat functions after all clients have moved on.
** Kill original-initargs -- BEWARE, it currently has clients!
*** current ECL users used to depend on it for bundles, and may or may
   not be satisfied with how it's not propagated anymore.
*** SLIME uses it (!)
*** weblocks uses it (!)
** To allow semantically distinct operations of the same class:
You'd need to have a protocol to canonicalize them
in the *OPERATIONS* memoization table, not by class name,
but by CONS of the class name and some CANONICAL-OPERATION-INITARGS.
The latter would be a generic function called on the initargs,
where any parasite initargs such as FORCE and FORCE-NOT have been removed,
since they below to the PLAN, not the OPERATION:
the OPERATE protocol would be refined to explicit split
arguments to be passed to MAKE-PLAN or to MAKE-OPERATION.
The default method for CANONICAL-OPERATION-INITARGS
would SORT (a plist->alist of) the initargs,
and that would replace the current ORIGINAL-INITARGS slot.
For this scheme to work even in presence of undisciplined users
using MAKE-INSTANCE on an operation class,
the OPERATION class would have an extra slot EFFECTIVE-OPERATION,
uninitialized by default (nil or unbound), whose accessor initializes it
if it's uninitialized, by looking up a canonical instance in *OPERATIONS*,
and if unfound registering the current operation as canonical.
Then, each component's COMPONENT-OPERATION-TIME hash-table
would be indexed by canonicalized operation object
rather than by operation class,
and POIU would have to be changed accordingly.
Of course, this entire cleanup is incompatible
with how SWANK and GBBopen currently abuse slots of operation,
so these would have to be fixed first.
And that's why I didn't do it.
It looks like SWANK can be fixed soon, though, so we'll see.

* Hunt systems that use obsolete APIs

* Get rid of component-properties
** directly use component-properties:
*** yaclml.asd => misguided :features for version comparison
*** amazon-ecs-20110418-git/amazon-ecs.asd => :website property
*** hemlock.asd => bad implementation of latin1 encodings
** .asd use :properties
*** arnesi, arnesi+ => :features, misguided for version comparison and pseudo #+features
*** lkcas, thopter => :long-name
*** cl-irc cliki-bot rss cl-syslog com.informatimago.clext
   com.informatimago.clisp com.informatimago.clmisc
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.arithmetic
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.bank
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.cesarum
   com.informatimago.common-lisp com.informatimago.common-lisp.csv
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.cxx
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.data-encoding
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.diagram
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.ed
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.graphviz
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.heap
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.html-base
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.html-generator
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.html-parser
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.http
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.interactive
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.invoice
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.lisp
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.lisp.ibcl
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.lisp.stepper
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.lisp-reader
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.lisp-sexp
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.lisp-text
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.parser
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.picture
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.regexp
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.rfc2822
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.rfc3548
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.telnet
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.unix
   linc
   com.informatimago.lispdoc
   com.informatimago.lua
   com.informatimago.cocoa-playground
   com.informatimago.objcl
   com.informatimago.rdp
   com.informatimago.rdp.basic
   com.informatimago.rdp.basic.example
   com.informatimago.rdp.example
   com.informatimago.susv3
   com.informatimago.common-lisp.tools.make-depends
   com.informatimago.xcode
   spartns
   xlunit
   => (uninterned!)
   #:author-email #:date
   (#:albert #:output-dirs)
   (#:albert #:formats)
   (#:albert #:docbook #:template)
   (#:albert #:docbook #:bgcolor)
   (#:albert #:docbook #:textcolor)
   (#:albert #:docbook #:dtd)
*** portableaserve
   =>
   ("system" "author" "email")
   ("albert" "presentation" "output-dir")
   ("albert" "presentation" "formats")
   ("albert" "docbook" "dtd")
   ("albert" "docbook" "template")
*** com.clearly-useful.generic-collection-interface => :com.clearly-useful
*** metatilities
   => :ait-timeout :system-applicable-p
*** ucw ucw-core
   =>
   version

* ASDF4: search for this tag, rename things (incompatibly, thus) and cleanup code.

* Documentation
** See message from 2014-01-27 05:26:44 GMT for stuff to document.
   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.asdf.devel/3675/focus=3695
** style guide for .asd files

* UIOP
** deferred-warnings support probably needs to be redone better.
*** implement deferred warnings support on lispworks
*** turn undefined function style-warnings into full warnings(?)
*** work with cl-test-grid to eliminate deferred warnings from quicklisp libraries
*** https://www.mail-archive.com/asdf-devel@common-lisp.net/msg03608.html
*** czak@google.com rewrote part of deferred warnings support.
   Ask him to release the code he implemented at Google under QITAB.

** Ensure all run-program issues on Windows are solved.
*** SBCL cannot do raw CMD.EXE command-lines
*** We don't seem to properly escape CRLF in escape-windows-token,
   or maybe it is, but CMD.EXE does the wrong thing in them,
   so the semantics depend on whether it's used,
   or maybe it's CCL eating them while parsing, or maybe not, etc.
   In any case, this requires clarification.

** define-package cannot deal with symbols moving "forward".
*** document that THOU SHALT NOT USE :RECYCLE with packages previously
   defined by define-package when building from scratch.
*** Maybe add a check? But how to tell whether you're building from scratch?
*** Add some :moved-to directive to define-package, such that
   (:moved-to forward-package symbols...)
   will declare symbols as moved forward: when the symbol already exists,
   it is moved to the forward package if that package already exists,
   after the package created if it doesn't exist yet (!)
*** There again, a check that a forward-package is not backward
   would be very nice.

* Migrate from component-depends-on to action-depends-on
** I contend a future version of ASDF will replace
   (component-depends-on operation component)
   with (action-depends-on plan operation component).
   This allows for different normalization strategies for dependencies
   (including strategies that avoid resolving things to NIL),
   a reified context for featurep checks, etc.
** Easy but long backward-compatible transition:
*** get all users to use the new gf and keep extending both new and old gf,
   meanwhile the new gf has an around method that actually calls the old gf
   except in testing mode and/or if we can check that they're using the new convention
*** when everyone has migrated, remove the old mode and the short-circuit.
** However, we cannot deprecate component-depends-on yet — not until we have
   some transition in place to a better interface.


* Faster source-registry:
** In addition and/or as a substitute to the .cl-source-registry.cache,
   that is meant to be semi-automatically managed, there could be
   a cl-source-registry.conf meant for manual management:
   when recursing into a source-registry :tree, if such file is present
   (or if not, if a hidden .cl-source-registry.conf is present instead?),
   its contents is read as a (:source-registry ...) specification, and
   replaces the actual or notional (:tree ...) for the current directory;
   it may then include :file entries as well as :directory and :tree entries,
   whereby the programmer can explicitly give a definitive list of
   systems exported by his software, while excluding any test system
   that he doesn't want to export. This means that developers have
   both a way of speeding up the build of their software and of
   avoiding pollution by test systems that should remain private,
   and that they can otherwise explicitly enable when they need them.
** The .cl-source-registry.cache should avoid recursing into
   directories that themselves already have a cache or a .conf file,
   but instead store the name of these directories,
   so these files will be read recursively by asdf, allowing for
   semi-modular updates.

* Properly deprecate all that needs to go
** Get lisa, readable, bourbaki to NOT include ASDF 1 anymore in their sources.
** Identify all the things in ASDF that we want to deprecate, and make
   sure we deprecate them all in 3.2.
** Implement support for deprecating old packages,
   by having all functions and macros under the old package name be
   proxies to those in the new package name?
   (Exception: special variables can't be proxies, have to be imported.)
** Eradicate Quicklisp systems that depend on asdf-driver or
   asdf-package-system, make them depend on uiop and asdf3.1 instead.