Feature request: clear-system

[Scott L. Burson]

I have had this in my local version for some time and occasionally find it useful during development, when I'm changing a system definition in an incompatible way. It saves me from having to restart Lisp so often. The implementation is trivial:

(defun clear-system (name)
  (setf (gethash (coerce-name name) *defined-systems*) nil ))

[Scott L. Burson (scott-sympoiesis)]

Changed "feature request" in title to "wanted", since that seems to be the convention.

[Robert P. Goldman (rpgoldman)]

Why is this necessary? If I simply modify a .asd file the old definition will be clobbered and the new definition loaded. What is the purpose of CLEAR-SYSTEM? Is it intended to make a system unloadable? Force a reload of the .asd file?

[Scott L. Burson (scott-sympoiesis)]

I use it when I want to force the system to be reloaded from scratch. Typically, I also rename its package(s) out of the way also, so the old version won't affect the new one in any way.

It's a crude mechanism, and maybe there's a better way.

When you modify the .asd file, does ASDF forget all recorded operations on the system?

[Faré (fahree)]

Yes, that's a valid thing to ask for. I haven't put much thought on what is the Right Way to achieve the effect, though. Leaving unresolved for now. A good exercise for whoever replaces me as ASDF maintainer.

[Faré (fahree)]

Committed and documented in 2.110 (and soon to be 2.004 ?).

A test case would be great... can you provide one?

[Faré (fahree)]

Failed to export it until 2.121, which will be released as part of 2.006.