gmane.lisp.openmcl.devel

David Brown | 6 Oct 10:32

Lisp image filename.

Is there any particular reason for the distinction on darwin of naming
the image by tacking an ".image" onto the filename, and other
platforms that use an equivalent named file in uppercase?

The reason I ask is that I commonly work on Linux images running in a
VM on MacOS.  Generally, my home directory is just mapped through to
the underlying HFS filesystem.  With the case-paired filenames, I'm
not able to store CCL in my home directory, but must expand it
somewhere in a native filesystem.

It seems like things would be simpler overall to just use an extension
on the name, and allow things to work on any platform, even if the
filesystem happens to be case insensitive.

Thanks,
David Brown

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Gary Byers | 6 Oct 22:26

Re: Lisp image filename.

On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, David Brown wrote:

> Is there any particular reason for the distinction on darwin of naming
> the image by tacking an ".image" onto the filename, and other
> platforms that use an equivalent named file in uppercase?

Lack of foresight, mostly.  Inertia factors into it, too: there are a
handful (maybe a few handfuls ...) of places in the code and
documentation that "know" that some platforms use the case-inversion
convention and others use ".image".  There have always been exceptions
to assumptions about a platform's case-sensitivity (it's usually an
attribute of the filesystem, not of the OS), and those exceptions are
likely to get more common.  Using the ".image" convention on all
platforms (as you propose) makes sense and I agree that it's worth
doing, but the change will probably be at least a little disruptive.
(Not so disruptive that it shouldn't be done, but at least a little
disruptive.)

>
> The reason I ask is that I commonly work on Linux images running in a
> VM on MacOS.  Generally, my home directory is just mapped through to
> the underlying HFS filesystem.  With the case-paired filenames, I'm
> not able to store CCL in my home directory, but must expand it
> somewhere in a native filesystem.
>
> It seems like things would be simpler overall to just use an extension
> on the name, and allow things to work on any platform, even if the
> filesystem happens to be case insensitive.
>

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Chun Tian (binghe | 7 Oct 16:52

Re: Lisp image filename.

>
> On Mon, 6 Oct 2008, David Brown wrote:
>
>> Is there any particular reason for the distinction on darwin of  
>> naming
>> the image by tacking an ".image" onto the filename, and other
>> platforms that use an equivalent named file in uppercase?
>
> Lack of foresight, mostly.  Inertia factors into it, too: there are a
> handful (maybe a few handfuls ...) of places in the code and
> documentation that "know" that some platforms use the case-inversion
> convention and others use ".image".  There have always been exceptions
> to assumptions about a platform's case-sensitivity (it's usually an
> attribute of the filesystem, not of the OS), and those exceptions are
> likely to get more common.  Using the ".image" convention on all
> platforms (as you propose) makes sense and I agree that it's worth
> doing, but the change will probably be at least a little disruptive.
> (Not so disruptive that it shouldn't be done, but at least a little
> disruptive.)

I also suggest this change (using .image convention on all platforms).  
Now It's impossible to checkout CCL repository (non-Mac platform) on  
Mac OS X, just because svn cannot distinguish the two files with the  
same name but different case.

I'm running a Solaris 10 virtual machine on Mac OS X by VMware Fusion,  
and mapping HFS directories into Solaris. I want to checkout CCL for  
Solaris on Mac and then use it in Solaris, but cannot do (the reason  
above). Another side, install a svn client on Solaris 10 is quite  
hard, so many sunfreeware packages to install, and it could be avoid

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