Please update ASDF

[Faré]

As of 2019-04-23, SBCL uses ASDF 3.3.1 from November 2017, but ASDF 3.3.2 was released in May 2018 and 3.3.3 in March 2019, fixing many issues, including a few SBCL-specific ones. Please update to the latest ASDF release, whichever it may be by the time you close this bug. Note that ASDF 3.3.3 has notably been by included in CCL with no adverse reports and passes tests with cl-test-grid.

[Stas Boukarev (stassats)]

Each time ASDF is updated there are problems cropping up, some of which are not bugs but backwards incompatible changes. When somebody updates SBCL they may not want to update ASDF at the same time. With it being a third party project we cannot direct the same attention to quality or have the same policy towards backwards compatibility.
If anyone wants to update ASDF they can do it locally, to any version at any time, by loading it before the one bundled with SBCL.

[Michał "phoe" Herda (phoe-krk)]

According to historic data, ASDF updates tend to break various unrelated things for many people. Therefore, AFAIK, SBCL prefers to stay on an older version of ASDF and support it instead of jumping onto the newest one in order to avoid getting hit in the face with various ASDF breakages.

[Stas Boukarev (stassats)]

> but then what is the point in bundling it?

I would prefer not to, but it already is, so can't change that without breaking.

[Stas Boukarev (stassats)]

Easy for you to say, you're not the one who has to face all the "Hi, I updated SBCL and now my program doesn't build anymore".

[Stas Boukarev (stassats)]

You can update your own ASDF at any time, if your .asd depend on something new, insert a version assertion in them.

The goal of SBCL is to provide a CL implementation, and supplying third party software with it is out of such scope. The current ASDF works fine for SBCL's own needs, loading and building contribs, anything else is on the third party. Would've been nice if ASDF behaved differently, but it doesn't, so that's the current state. And I'm not the bigger person to accept that, so there's also that, but why should I?