Comment 23 for bug 1335323

grep finds 5 occurrences of with-asdf-cache, at various entry points in the nexus of asdf functions. It's definitely not just for operate, and any of these functions can potentially cause the other functions to be called:

find-system
load-asd
locate-system
register-system-definition
operate

I have no idea what kind of restart you want and for what purpose. Maybe it's call-with-asdf-cache itself that needs a restart?

I have no idea what "algorithm for computing the set of cache lines that are stale" you are talking about. Ask Zach, he's the one who seems to have systems that appear in the middle of a session — something I think is a bad idea.