1.0.11.22: hash-table synchronization support

[sbcl.git] / contrib / asdf / README

diff --git a/contrib/asdf/README b/contrib/asdf/README
index 3cb3a60..53f88f1 100644 (file)
--- a/contrib/asdf/README
+++ b/contrib/asdf/README
@@ -1,4 +1,10 @@
-README,v 1.35 2003/08/05 23:00:32 kevinrosenberg Exp         -*- Text -*-
+README,v 1.39 2006/08/21 10:52:32 crhodes Exp         -*- Text -*-
+
+The canonical documentation for asdf is in the file asdf.texinfo.  
+The significant overlap between this file and that will one day be
+resolved by deleting text from this file; in the meantime, please look
+there before here.
+
 
 
 asdf: another system definition facility          
@@ -111,9 +117,10 @@ the grunt work.
 
 asdf is extensible to new operations and to new component types.  This
 allows the addition of behaviours: for example, a new component could
-be added for Java JAR archives, and methods specialised on
-compile-op added for it that would accomplish the relevant
-actions.
+be added for Java JAR archives, and methods specialised on compile-op
+added for it that would accomplish the relevant actions.  Users
+defining their own operations and component types should inherit from
+the asdf base classes asdf:operation and asdf:component respectively.
 
 * Inspiration
 
@@ -472,7 +479,9 @@ package is created for them to load into, so that different systems do
 not overwrite each others operations.  The user may also wish to (and
 is recommended to) include defpackage and in-package forms in his
 system definition files, however, so that they can be loaded manually
-if need be.
+if need be.  It is not recommended to use the CL-USER package for this
+purpose, as definitions made in this package will affect the parsing
+of asdf systems.
 
 For convenience in the normal case, and for backward compatibility
 with the spirit of mk-defsystem, the default contents of
@@ -609,15 +618,16 @@ this pathname information will not be overwritten with
 if the user loads up the .asd file into his editor and
 interactively re-evaluates that form
 
-* Error handling
+ * Error handling
 
 It is an error to define a system incorrectly: an implementation may
 detect this and signal a generalised instance of
-SYSTEM-DEFINITION-ERROR
+SYSTEM-DEFINITION-ERROR.
 
 Operations may go wrong (for example when source files contain
 errors).  These are signalled using generalised instances of
-OPERATION-ERROR
+OPERATION-ERROR, with condition readers ERROR-COMPONENT and
+ERROR-OPERATION for the component and operation which erred.
 
 * Compilation error and warning handling
 
@@ -675,6 +685,11 @@ A "dry run" of an operation can be made with the following form:
 This uses unexported symbols.  What would be a nice interface for this
 functionality?
 
+** patches
+
+Sometimes one wants to 
+
+
 * missing bits in implementation
 
 ** all of the above