ASDF: Another System Definition Facility: Manual For Version 3.3.3.3

ASDF: Another System Definition
Facility
Manual for Version 3.3.3.3
This manual describes ASDF, a system definition facility for Common Lisp programs and
libraries.
You can find the latest version of this manual at https://common-lisp.net/project/
asdf/asdf.html.
ASDF Copyright c 2001-2019 Daniel Barlow and contributors.
This manual Copyright c 2001-2019 Daniel Barlow and contributors.
This manual revised c 2009-2019 Robert P. Goldman and Francois-Rene Rideau.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this soft-
ware and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom
the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or
substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONIN-
FRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR
IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.
i
Table of Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Quick start summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3 Loading ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 Loading a pre-installed ASDF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2 Checking whether ASDF is loaded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.3 Upgrading ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.4 Replacing your implementation’s ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.5 Loading ASDF from source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4 Configuring ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1 Configuring ASDF to find your systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2 Configuring ASDF to find your systems — old style . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3 Configuring where ASDF stores object files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.4 Resetting the ASDF configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5 Using ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1 Loading a system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2 Convenience Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3 Moving on. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6 Defining systems with defsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

6.1 The defsystem form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2 A more involved example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.3 The defsystem grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.3.1 System designators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.3.2 Simple component names (simple-component-name) . . . . . . 18
6.3.3 Complex component names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3.4 Component types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3.5 System class names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3.6 Defsystem depends on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.3.7 Build-operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.3.8 Weakly depends on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.3.9 Pathname specifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.3.10 Version specifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.3.11 Require . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.3.12 Feature dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.3.13 Using logical pathnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.3.14 Serial dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.3.15 Source location (:pathname) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
ii
6.3.16 if-feature option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6.3.17 Entry point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.3.18 feature requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.4 Other code in .asd files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.5 The package-inferred-system extension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
7 The Object model of ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

7.1 Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
7.1.1 Predefined operations of ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7.1.2 Creating new operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.2 Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.2.1 Common attributes of components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.2.1.1 Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.2.1.2 Version identifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.2.1.3 Required features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.2.1.4 Dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
7.2.1.5 pathname. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
7.2.1.6 properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
7.2.2 Pre-defined subclasses of component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
7.2.3 Creating new component types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7.3 Dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7.4 Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
8 Controlling where ASDF searches for systems . . 43

8.1 Configurations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
8.2 Truenames and other dangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
8.3 XDG base directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
8.4 Backward Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
8.5 Configuration DSL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
8.6 Configuration Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
8.6.1 The :here directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.7 Shell-friendly syntax for configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
8.8 Search Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.9 Caching Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
8.10 Configuration API. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
8.11 Introspection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.11.1 *source-registry-parameter* variable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.11.2 Information about system dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.12 Status. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.13 Rejected ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.14 TODO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8.15 Credits for the source-registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
iii
9 Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files . . 53

9.1 Configurations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
9.2 Backward Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
9.3 Configuration DSL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.4 Configuration Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.5 Shell-friendly syntax for configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.6 Semantics of Output Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.7 Caching Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.8 Output location API . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.9 Credits for output translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
10 Error handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
10.1 ASDF errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
10.2 Compilation error and warning handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
11 Miscellaneous additional functionality . . . . . . 61

11.1 Controlling file compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
11.2 Controlling source file character encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
11.3 Miscellaneous Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
11.4 Some Utility Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
12 Getting the latest version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
13 FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
13.1 “Where do I report a bug?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
13.2 Mailing list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
13.3 “What has changed between ASDF 1, ASDF 2, and ASDF 3?” . . 70
13.3.1 What are ASDF 1, ASDF 2, and ASDF 3? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
13.3.2 How do I detect the ASDF version? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
13.3.3 ASDF can portably name files in subdirectories . . . . . . . . . . 71
13.3.4 Output translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
13.3.5 Source Registry Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
13.3.6 Usual operations are made easier to the user . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
13.3.7 Many bugs have been fixed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
13.3.8 ASDF itself is versioned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
13.3.9 ASDF can be upgraded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
13.3.10 Decoupled release cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
13.3.11 Pitfalls of the transition to ASDF 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
13.3.12 Pitfalls of the upgrade to ASDF 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
13.3.13 What happened to the bundle operations? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
13.4 Issues with installing the proper version of ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
13.4.1 “My Common Lisp implementation comes with an
outdated version of ASDF. What to do?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
13.4.2 “I’m a Common Lisp implementation vendor. When
and how should I upgrade ASDF?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
iv
13.4.3 After upgrading ASDF, ASDF (and

Quicklisp) can’t find my systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
13.5 Issues with configuring ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
13.5.1 “How can I customize where fasl files are stored?” . . . . . . . . 78
13.5.2 “How can I wholly disable the compiler output cache?” . . 79
13.6 Issues with using and extending ASDF to define systems . . . . . . 79
13.6.1 “How can I cater for unit-testing in my system?”. . . . . . . . . 79
13.6.2 “How can I cater for
documentation generation in my system?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
13.6.3 “How can I maintain non-Lisp (e.g. C) source files?” . . . . . 79
13.6.4 “I want to put my module’s files at the
top level. How do I do this?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
13.6.5 How do I create a system definition where all
the source files have a .cl extension? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
13.6.6 How do I mark a source file to be
loaded only and not compiled? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
13.6.7 How do I work with readtables? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
13.6.7.1 How should my system use a
readtable exported by another system? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
13.6.7.2 How should my library make a
readtable available to other systems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
13.6.8 How can I capture ASDF’s output? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
13.6.9 *LOAD-PATHNAME* and
*LOAD-TRUENAME* have weird values, help! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
13.7 ASDF development FAQs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
13.7.1 How do I run the tests interactively in a REPL? . . . . . . . . . 83
Ongoing Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Concept Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Function and Macro Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Variable Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Class and Type Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

1
1 Introduction
ASDF, or Another System Definition Facility, is a build system: a tool for specifying how
systems of Common Lisp software are made up of components (sub-systems and files), and
how to operate on these components in the right order so that they can be compiled, loaded,
tested, etc. If you are new to ASDF, see Chapter 2 [the quick start guide], page 2.
ASDF presents three faces: one for users of Common Lisp software who want to reuse
other people’s code, one for writers of Common Lisp software who want to specify how
to build their systems, and one for implementers of Common Lisp extensions who want
to extend the build system. For more specifics, see Chapter 5 [Using ASDF], page 10, to
learn how to use ASDF to load a system. See Chapter 6 [Defining systems with defsystem],
page 13, to learn how to define a system of your own. See Chapter 7 [The object model of
ASDF], page 28, for a description of the ASDF internals and how to extend ASDF.
Note that ASDF is not a tool for library and system installation; it plays a role like
make or ant, not like a package manager. In particular, ASDF should not to be confused
with Quicklisp or ASDF-Install, that attempt to find and download ASDF systems for you.
Despite what the name might suggest, ASDF-Install was never a part of ASDF; it was always
a separate piece of software. ASDF-Install has also been unmaintained and obsolete for a
very long time. We recommend you use Quicklisp (http://www.quicklisp.org/) instead,
a Common Lisp package manager which works well and is being actively maintained. If you
want to download software from version control instead of tarballs, so you may more easily
modify it, we recommend clbuild (http://common-lisp.net/project/clbuild/). As for
where on your filesystem to install Common Lisp software, we recommend subdirectories of
~/common-lisp/: starting with ASDF 3.1.2 (2014), this hierarchy is included in the default
source-registry configuration.
Finally, note that this manual is incomplete. All the bases are covered, but many
advanced topics are only barely alluded to, and there is not much in terms of examples. The
source code remains the ultimate source of information, free software systems in Quicklisp
remain the best source of examples, and the mailing-list the best place to ask for help.
2
2 Quick start summary

• To load an ASDF system:
• Load ASDF itself into your Lisp image, using (require "asdf"). Check that you
have a recent version using (asdf:asdf-version). For more details, or if any of
the above fails, see Chapter 3 [Loading ASDF], page 3.
• Make sure software is installed where ASDF can find it. The simplest way is to
put all your Lisp code in subdirectories of ~/common-lisp/ (starting with ASDF
3.1.2), or ~/.local/share/common-lisp/source/ (for ASDF 2 and later, or if
you want to keep source in a hidden directory). For more details, see Section 4.1
[Configuring ASDF to find your systems], page 6.
• Load your system with (asdf:load-system "my-system"). See Chapter 5 [Using
ASDF], page 10.
• To make your own ASDF system:
• As above, load and configure ASDF.
• Make a new directory for your system, my-system/, again in a location
where ASDF can find it. All else being equal, the easiest location is probably
~/common-lisp/my-system/. See Section 4.1 [Configuring ASDF to find your
systems], page 6.
• Create an ASDF system definition listing the dependencies of your system, its
components, and their interdependencies, and put it in my-system.asd. This file
must have the same name as your system, all lowercase. See Chapter 6 [Defining
systems with defsystem], page 13.
• Use (asdf:load-system "my-system") to make sure it’s all working properly. See
Chapter 5 [Using ASDF], page 10.
3
3 Loading ASDF
3.1 Loading a pre-installed ASDF

The recommended way to load ASDF is via:
(require "asdf")
All actively maintained Lisp implementations now include a copy of ASDF 3 that you
can load this way using Common Lisp’s require function.1
If the implementation you are using doesn’t provide a recent ASDF 3, we recommend you
upgrade it. If for some reason you would rather not upgrade it, we recommend you replace
your implementation’s ASDF. See Section 3.4 [Replacing your implementation’s ASDF],
page 4. If all else fails, see see Section 3.5 [Loading ASDF from source], page 4, below.
If you use an actively maintained implementation that fails to provide an up-to-date
enough stable release of ASDF, you may also send a bug report to your Lisp vendor and
complain about it — or you may fix the issue yourself if it’s free software.
As of the writing of this manual, the following implementations provide ASDF 3 this
way: ABCL, Allegro CL, CLASP, Clozure CL, CMUCL, ECL, GNU CLISP, LispWorks,
MKCL, SBCL. The following implementations only provide ASDF 2: MOCL, XCL. The
following implementations don’t provide ASDF: Corman CL, GCL, Genera, MCL, SCL.
The latter implementations are not actively maintained (except maybe GCL); if some of
them are ever released again, they probably will include ASDF 3.
For maximum convenience you might want to have ASDF loaded whenever you start
your Lisp implementation, for example by loading it from the startup script or dumping a
custom core — check your Lisp implementation’s manual for details. SLIME notably sports
a slime-asdf contrib that makes life easier with ASDF.
3.2 Checking whether ASDF is loaded

To check that ASDF is properly loaded, you can run this form:
(asdf:asdf-version)
If it returns a string, that is the version of ASDF that is currently installed. If that
version is suitably recent (say, 3.1.2 or later), then you can skip directly to next chapter:
See Chapter 4 [Configuring ASDF], page 6.
If it raises an error, then either ASDF is not loaded, or you are using a very old version
of ASDF, and need to install ASDF 3.
For more precision in detecting versions old and new, see Section 13.3.2 [How do I detect
the ASDF version?], page 71.
If you are experiencing problems with ASDF, please try upgrading to the latest released
version, using the method below, before you contact us and raise an issue.
1
NB: all implementations except GNU CLISP also accept (require "ASDF"), (require ’asdf) and
(require :asdf). For portability’s sake, you should use (require "asdf").
Chapter 3: Loading ASDF 4
3.3 Upgrading ASDF

If your implementation already provides ASDF 3 or later (and it should), but you want
a more recent ASDF version than your implementation provides, then you just need to
ensure the more recent ASDF is installed in a configured path, like any other system.
We recommend you download an official tarball or checkout a release from git into
~/common-lisp/asdf/. (see Section 4.1 [Configuring ASDF to find your systems], page 6).
Once the source code for ASDF is installed, you don’t need any extra step to load it
beyond the usual (require "asdf"): ASDF 3 will automatically look whether an updated
version of itself is available amongst the regularly configured systems, before it compiles
anything else.
If your implementation fails to provide ASDF 3 or later, see Section 3.4 [Replacing your
implementation’s ASDF], page 4.
3.4 Replacing your implementation’s ASDF

All maintained implementations now provide ASDF 3 in their latest release. If yours doesn’t,
we recommend you upgrade it.
Now, if you insist on using an old implementation that didn’t provide ASDF or provided
an old version, we recommend installing a recent ASDF, as explained below, into your im-
plementation’s installation directory. Thus your modified implementation will now provide
ASDF 3. This requires proper write permissions and may necessitate execution as a system
administrator.
The ASDF source repository contains a tool to help you upgrade your implementation’s
ASDF. You can invoke it from the shell command-line as tools/asdf-tools install-asdf
lispworks (where you can replace lispworks by the name of the relevant implementation),
or you can (load "tools/install-asdf.lisp") from your Lisp REPL.
This script works on Allegro CL, Clozure CL, CMU CL, ECL, GCL, GNU CLISP,
LispWorks, MKCL, SBCL, SCL, XCL. It doesn’t work on ABCL, Corman CL, Genera,
MCL, MOCL. Happily, ABCL is usually pretty up to date and shouldn’t need that script.
GCL requires a very recent version, and hasn’t been tested much. Corman CL, Genera,
MCL are obsolete anyway. MOCL is incomplete.
3.5 Loading ASDF from source

If you write build scripts that must remain portable to old machines with old implementa-
tions that you cannot ensure have been upgraded or modified to provide a recent ASDF,
you may have to install the file asdf.lisp somewhere and load it with:
(load "/path/to/your/installed/asdf.lisp")
The single file asdf.lisp is all you normally need to use ASDF.
You can extract this file from latest release tarball on the ASDF website (https://
common-lisp.net/project/asdf/). If you are daring and willing to report bugs, you can
get the latest and greatest version of ASDF from its git repository. See Chapter 12 [Getting
the latest version], page 69.
For scripts that try to use ASDF simply via require at first, and make heroic at-
tempts to load it the hard way if at first they don’t succeed, see tools/load-asdf.lisp
Chapter 3: Loading ASDF 5
distributed with the ASDF source repository, or the code of cl-launch (https://cliki.
net/cl-launch).
6
4 Configuring ASDF
For standard use cases, ASDF should work pretty much out of the box. We recommend
you skim the sections on configuring ASDF to find your systems and choose the method
of installing Lisp software that works best for you. Then skip directly to See Chapter 5
[Using ASDF], page 10. That will probably be enough. You are unlikely to have to worry
about the way ASDF stores object files, and resetting the ASDF configuration is usually
only needed in corner cases.
4.1 Configuring ASDF to find your systems

In order to compile and load your systems, ASDF must be configured to find the .asd files
that contain system definitions.
There are a number of different techniques for setting yourself up with ASDF, starting
from easiest to the most complex:
• Put all of your systems in one of the standard locations, subdirectories of
• ~/common-lisp/ or
• ~/.local/share/common-lisp/source/.
If you install software there, you don’t need further configuration.1 You can then skip
to the next section. See Section 5.1 [Loading a system], page 10.
• If you’re using some tool to install software (e.g. Quicklisp), the authors of that tool
should already have configured ASDF.
• If you have more specific desires about how to lay out your software on disk, the
preferred way to configure where ASDF finds your systems is the source-registry
facility, fully described in its own chapter of this manual. See Chapter 8 [Controlling
where ASDF searches for systems], page 43. Here is a quick recipe for getting started.
First create the directory ~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/2 ;
there create a file with any name of your choice but with the type conf3 , for
instance 50-luser-lisp.conf; in this file, add the following line to tell ASDF to
recursively scan all the subdirectories under /home/luser/lisp/ for .asd files:
(:tree "/home/luser/lisp/")
That’s enough. You may replace /home/luser/lisp/ by wherever you want to install
your source code. You don’t actually need to specify anything if you use the default
~/common-lisp/ as above and your implementation provides ASDF 3.1.2 or later. If
1
~/common-lisp/ is only included in the default configuration starting with ASDF 3.1.2 or later. If your
implementation provides an earlier variant of ASDF, you may need to explicitly configure it to use this
path, as further explained.
2
For Windows users, and starting with ASDF 3.1.5, start from your %LOCALAPPDATA%, which is usually
~/AppData/Local/ (but you can ask in a CMD.EXE terminal echo %LOCALAPPDATA% to make sure) and
underneath create a subpath config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/.
3
By requiring the .conf extension, and ignoring other files, ASDF allows you to have disabled files, editor
backups, etc. in the same directory with your active configuration files.
ASDF will also ignore files whose names start with a . character.
It is customary to start the filename with two digits, to control the sorting of the conf files in the source
registry directory, and thus the order in which the directories will be scanned.
Chapter 4: Configuring ASDF 7
your implementation provides an earlier variant of ASDF 3, you might want to specify
(:tree (:home "common-lisp/")) for bootstrap purposes, then install a recent source
tree of ASDF under ~/common-lisp/asdf/.
If you prefer to use a “link farm”, which is faster to use but costlier to manage than a
recursive traversal, say at /home/luser/.asd-link-farm/, then you may instead (or
additionally) create a file 42-asd-link-farm.conf, containing the line: (:directory
"/home/luser/.asd-link-farm/")
ASDF will automatically read your configuration the first time you try to find a system.
If necessary, you can reset the source-registry configuration with:
(asdf:clear-source-registry)
• In earlier versions of ASDF, the system source registry was configured using a global
variable, asdf:*central-registry*. For more details about this, see the following
section, Section 4.2 [Configuring ASDF to find your systems — old style], page 7.
Unless you need to understand this, skip directly to Section 4.3 [Configuring where
ASDF stores object files], page 8.
Note that your Operating System distribution or your system administrator may already
have configured system-managed libraries for you.
4.2 Configuring ASDF to find your systems — old style

Novices may skip this section. Please do not use the central-registry if you are a novice,
and do not instruct novices to use the central-registry.
The old way to configure ASDF to find your systems is by pushing directory pathnames
onto the variable asdf:*central-registry*.
You must configure this variable after you load ASDF 3 or later, yet before the first
time you try to use it. This loading and configuring of ASDF must happen as part of some
initialization script: typically, either a script you maintain that builds your project, or your
implementation’s initialization script (e.g. ~/.sbclrc for SBCL).
Also, if you are using an ancient ASDF 2 or earlier to load ASDF 3 or later, then after
it loads the ancient ASDF, your script must configure the central-registry a first time to
tell ASDF 1 or 2 where to find ASDF 3, then load ASDF 3 with e.g. (asdf:operate
’asdf:load-op "asdf"), then configure the central-registry again, because ASDF 3 will
not preserve the central-registry from ASDF 2 when upgrading. You should probably
be using the source-registry instead, which will be preserved (unless you manually called
asdf:initialize-source-registry with an argument, in which case you will have to do
it again indeed). However, if you are using an ancient ASDF 2 or earlier, we strongly
recommend that you should instead upgrade your implementation, or overwrite the ancient
ASDF installation with a more recent one: See Section 3.4 [Replacing your implementation’s
ASDF], page 4.
The asdf:*central-registry* is empty by default in ASDF 2 or ASDF 3, but is still
supported for compatibility with ASDF 1. When used, it takes precedence over the above
source-registry.4
4
It is possible to further customize the system definition file search. That’s considered advanced use, and
covered later: search forward for *system-definition-search-functions*. See Chapter 6 [Defining
systems with defsystem], page 13.
For example, let’s say you want ASDF to find the .asd file /home/me/src/foo/foo.asd.
In your Lisp initialization file, you could have the following:
(require "asdf")
(push "/home/me/src/foo/" asdf:*central-registry*)
Note the trailing slash: when searching for a system, ASDF will evaluate each entry
of the central registry and coerce the result to a pathname.5 The trailing directory name
separator is necessary to tell Lisp that you’re discussing a directory rather than a file. If
you leave it out, ASDF is likely to look in /home/me/src/ instead of /home/me/src/foo/
as you intended, and fail to find your system definition. Modern versions of ASDF will issue
an error and offer you to remove such entries from the central-registry.
Typically there are a lot of .asd files, and a common idiom was to put symbolic links
to all of one’s .asd files in a common directory and push that directory (the “link farm”)
onto asdf:*central-registry*, instead of pushing each individual system directory.
ASDF knows to follow symlinks to the actual location of the systems.6
For example, if #p"/home/me/cl/systems/" is an element of *central-registry*, you
could set up the system foo as follows:
$ cd /home/me/cl/systems/
$ ln -s ~/src/foo/foo.asd .
This old style for configuring ASDF is not recommended for new users, but it is supported
for old users, and for users who want a simple way to programmatically control what
directories are added to the ASDF search path.
4.3 Configuring where ASDF stores object files

ASDF lets you configure where object files will be stored. Sensible defaults are provided
and you shouldn’t normally have to worry about it.
This allows the same source code repository to be shared between several versions of
several Common Lisp implementations, between several users using different compilation
options, with users who lack write privileges on shared source directories, etc. This also
keeps source directories from being cluttered with object/fasl files.
Starting with ASDF 2, the asdf-output-translations facility was added to ASDF
itself. This facility controls where object files will be stored. This facility is fully described
in a chapter of this manual, Chapter 9 [Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files],
page 53.
5
ASDF will indeed call eval on each entry. It will skip entries that evaluate to nil.
Strings and pathname objects are self-evaluating, in which case the eval step does nothing; but you may
push arbitrary s-expressions onto the central registry. These s-expressions may be evaluated to compute
context-dependent entries, e.g. things that depend on the value of shell variables or the identity of the
user.
The variable asdf:*central-registry* is thus a list of “system directory designators”. A system
directory designator is a form which will be evaluated whenever a system is to be found, and must
evaluate to a directory to look in (or nil). By “directory”, we mean “designator for a pathname with a
non-empty DIRECTORY component”.
6
On Windows, you can use Windows shortcuts instead of POSIX symlinks. if you try aliases under
MacOS, we are curious to hear about your experience.
Note that before ASDF 2, other ASDF add-ons offered the same functionality, each in
subtly different and incompatible ways: ASDF-Binary-Locations, cl-launch, common-lisp-
controller. ASDF-Binary-Locations is now not needed anymore and should not be used.
cl-launch 3.000 and common-lisp-controller 7.2 have been updated to delegate object file
placement to ASDF.
4.4 Resetting the ASDF configuration

When you dump and restore an image, or when you tweak your configuration, you may
want to reset the ASDF configuration. For that you may use the following function:
clear-configuration [Function]
Undoes any ASDF configuration regarding source-registry or output-translations.
This function is pushed onto the uiop:*image-dump-hook* by default, which

means that if you save an image using uiop:dump-image, or via asdf:image-op and
asdf:program-op, it will be automatically called to clear your configuration. If for
some reason you prefer to call your implementation’s underlying functionality, be
sure to call clear-configuration manually, or push it into your implementation’s
equivalent of uiop:*image-dump-hook*, e.g. sb-ext:*save-hooks* on SBCL, or
ext:*before-save-initializations* on CMUCL and SCL, etc.
10
5 Using ASDF
5.1 Loading a system

The system foo is loaded (and compiled, if necessary) by evaluating the following Lisp form:
(asdf:load-system :foo)
On some implementations (see Section 5.2 [Convenience Functions], page 10), ASDF
hooks into the cl:require facility and you can just use:
(require :foo)
Note that the canonical name of a system is a string, in lowercase. System names can
also be specified as symbols (including keyword symbols). If a symbol is given as argument,
its package is ignored, its symbol-name is taken, and converted to lowercase. The name
must be a suitable value for the :name initarg to make-pathname in whatever filesystem the
system is to be found.
Using lowercase as canonical is unconventional, but was selected after some consideration.
The type of file systems we support either have lowercase as customary case (Unix, Mac,
Windows) or silently convert lowercase to uppercase (lpns).
5.2 Convenience Functions

ASDF provides three commands for the most common system operations: load-system,
compile-system, and test-system.
ASDF also provides require-system, a variant of load-system that skips loading sys-
tems that are already loaded. This is sometimes useful, for example, in order to avoid
re-loading libraries that come pre-loaded into your lisp implementation.
ASDF also provides make, a way of allowing system developers to choose a default
operation for their systems. For example, a developer who has created a system intended to
format a specific document, might make document-formatting the default operation invoked
by make, instead of loading. If the system developer doesn’t specify in the system definition,
the default operation will be loading.
Because ASDF is an extensible system for defining operations on components, it also
provides a generic function operate, so you may arbitrarily operate on your systems beyond
the default operations. (At the interactive REPL, users often use its shorter alias oos, which
stands for operate-on-system, a name inherited from mk-defsystem.) You’ll use operate
whenever you want to do something beyond compiling, loading and testing.
load-system system &rest keys &key force force-not verbose version [Function]
&allow-other-keys
Apply operate with the operation load-op, the system, and any provided keyword
arguments. Calling load-system is the regular, recommended way to load a system
into the current image.
compile-system system &rest keys &key force force-not verbose [Function]
version &allow-other-keys
Apply operate with the operation compile-op, the system, and any provided key-
word arguments. This will make sure all the files in the system are compiled, but
Chapter 5: Using ASDF 11
not necessarily load any of them in the current image; on most systems, it will not
load all compiled files in the current image. This function exists for symmetry with
load-system but is not recommended unless you are writing build scripts and know
what you’re doing. But then, you might be interested in program-op rather than
compile-op.
test-system system &rest keys &key force force-not verbose version [Function]
&allow-other-keys
Apply operate with the operation test-op, the system, and any provided keyword
arguments. See [test-op], page 30.
make system &rest keys &key &allow-other-keys [Function]

Do “The Right Thing” with your system. Starting with ASDF 3.1, this function make
is also available. The default behaviour is to load the system as if by load-system; but
system authors can override this default in their system definition they may specify
an alternate operation as the intended use of their system, with a :build-operation
option in the defsystem form (see [Build-operation], page 20), and an intended output
pathname for that operation with :build-pathname. This function is experimental
and largely untested. Use at your own risk.
require-system system &rest keys &key &allow-other-keys [Function]

require-system skips any update to systems that have already been loaded, in the
spirit of cl:require. It does it by calling load-system with a keyword option exclud-
ing already loaded systems.1 . On actively maintained free software implementations
(namely recent versions of ABCL, Clozure CL, CMUCL, ECL, GNU CLISP, MKCL
and SBCL), once ASDF itself is loaded, cl:require too can load ASDF systems, by
falling back on require-system for module names not recognized by the implemen-
tation. (Note however that require-system does not fall back on cl:require; that
would introduce an “interesting” potential infinite loop to break somehow.)
cl:require and require-system are appropriate to load code that is not being
modified during the current programming session. cl:require will notably load the
implementation-provided extension modules; require-system won’t, unless they are
also defined as systems somehow, which SBCL and MKCL do. require-system
may also be used to load any number of ASDF systems that the user isn’t either
developing or debugging, for which a previously installed version is deemed to be
satisfactory; cl:require on the above-mentioned implementations will delegate to
require-system and may load them as well. But for code that you are actively de-
veloping, debugging, or otherwise modifying, you should use load-system, so ASDF
will pick on your modifications and transitively re-build the modified files and every-
thing that depends on them (that the requested system itself depends on — ASDF
itself never builds anything unless it’s an explicitly requested system or the depen-
dencies thereof).
1
For the curious, the option is :force-not (already-loaded-systems).
Chapter 5: Using ASDF 12
5.3 Moving on
That’s all you need to know to use ASDF to load systems written by others. The rest of this
manual deals with writing system definitions for Common Lisp software you write yourself,
including how to extend ASDF to define new operation and component types.
13
6 Defining systems with defsystem

This chapter describes how to use ASDF to define systems and develop software.
6.1 The defsystem form

This section begins with an example of a system definition, then gives the full grammar of
defsystem.
Let’s look at a simple system. This is a complete file that should be saved as
hello-lisp.asd (in order that ASDF can find it when ordered to operate on the system
named "hello-lisp").
;; Usual Lisp comments are allowed here
(defsystem "hello-lisp"
:description "hello-lisp: a sample Lisp system."
:version "0.0.1"
:author "Joe User <joe@example.com>"
:licence "Public Domain"
:depends-on ("optima.ppcre" "command-line-arguments")
:components ((:file "packages")
(:file "macros" :depends-on ("packages"))
(:file "hello" :depends-on ("macros"))))
Some notes about this example:
• The defsystem form defines a system named hello-lisp that contains three source
files: packages.lisp, macros.lisp and hello.lisp.
• The .lisp suffix is implicit for Lisp source files. The source files are located in the
same directory as the .asd file with the system definition.
• The file macros depends on packages (presumably because the package it’s in is de-
fined in packages), and the file hello depends on macros (and hence, transitively on
packages). This means that ASDF will compile and load packages then macros before
starting the compilation of file hello.
• This example system has external dependencies on two other systems, optima.ppcre
(that provides a friendly interface to matching regular expressions), and command-line-
arguments (that provides a way to parse arguments passed from the shell command
line). To use this system, ASDF must be configured to find installed copies of these
systems; it will load them before it tries to compile and load hello-lisp.
• This system also defines a bunch of metadata. While it is optional to define these
fields (and other fields like :bug-tracker, :mailto, :long-name, :long-description,
:source-control), it is strongly recommended to define the fields :description,
:version, :author, and :licence, especially if you intend your software to be even-
tually included in Quicklisp.
• Make sure you know how the :version numbers will be parsed! Only period-separated
non-negative integers are accepted at present. See [Version specifiers], page 21.
• This file contains a single form, the defsystem declaration. No in-package form, no
asdf: package prefix, no nothing. Just the one naked defsystem form. This is what
Chapter 6: Defining systems with defsystem 14
we recommend. More complex system definition files are possible with arbitrary Lisp
code, but we recommend that you keep it simple if you can. This will make your system
definitions more robust and more future-proof.
This is all you need to know to define simple systems. The next example is much more
involved, to give you a glimpse of how you can do more complex things. However, since it’s
ultimately arbitrary Lisp code, there is no bottom to the rabbit hole.
6.2 A more involved example

Let’s illustrate some more involved uses of defsystem via a slightly convoluted example:
(in-package :asdf-user)
(defsystem "foo"
:version (:read-file-form "variables" :at (3 2))
:components
((:file "package")
(:file "variables" :depends-on ("package"))
(:module "mod"
:depends-on ("package")
:serial t
:components ((:file "utils")
(:file "reader")
(:file "cooker")
(:static-file "data.raw"))
:output-files (compile-op (o c) (list "data.cooked"))
:perform (compile-op :after (o c)
(cook-data
:in (component-pathname (find-component c "data.raw"))
:out (first (output-files o c)))))
(:file "foo" :depends-on ("mod"))))
(defmethod action-description
((o compile-op) (c (eql (find-component "foo" "mod"))))
"cooking data")
Here are some notes about this example:
• The main thing this file does is define a system foo. It also contains other Lisp forms,
which we’ll examine below.
• Besides Lisp source files, this system contains a :module component named "mod",
which is a collection of three Lisp source files utils.lisp, reader.lisp, cooker.lisp
and data.raw
• Note that the :static-file does not have an implicit file type, unlike the Lisp source
files.
• This files will be located in a subdirectory of the main code directory named mod/
(this location could have been overridden to be in the same directory, or in a different
subdirectory; see the discussion of the :pathname option in Section 6.3 [The defsystem
grammar], page 16).
• The :serial t says that each sub-component of mod depends on the previous compo-
nents, so that cooker.lisp depends-on reader.lisp, which depends-on utils.lisp.
Also data.raw depends on all of them, but that doesn’t matter since it’s a static file;
on the other hand, if it appeared first, then all the Lisp files would be recompiled when
the data is modified, which is probably not what is desired in this case.
• The method-form tokens provide a shorthand for defining methods on particular com-
ponents. This part
:output-files (compile-op (o c) (list "data.cooked"))
:perform (compile-op :after (o c)
(cook-data
:out (first (output-files o c))))
has the effect of
(defmethod output-files ((o compile-op) (c (eql ...)))
(list "data.cooked"))
(defmethod perform :after ((o compile-op) (c (eql ...)))
(cook-data
:out (first (output-files o c))))
where ... is the component in question. In this case ... would expand to something
like
(find-component "foo" "mod")
For more details on the syntax of such forms, see Section 6.3 [The defsystem grammar],
page 16. For more details on what these methods do, see Section 7.1 [Operations],
page 28, in Chapter 7 [The object model of ASDF], page 28.
• There is an additional defmethod with a similar effect, because ASDF (as of ASDF
3.1.5) fails to accept inline-methods as above for action-description, instead only
supporting the deprecated explain interface.
• In this case, these methods describe how this module defines code that it then uses to
cook some data.
• Importantly, ASDF is told about the input and output files used by the data cooker,
and to make sure everyone agrees, the cooking function explicitly uses ASDF to access
pathnames to the input and output data.
• The file starts with a form (in-package :asdf-user), but it is actually redundant, not
necessary and not recommended. But yet more complex cases (also not recommended)
may usefully use an in-package form.
• Indeed, ASDF does not load .asd files simply with cl:load, and neither should you.
You should let ASDF find and load them when you operate on systems. If you somehow
must load a .asd file, use the same function asdf:load-asd that ASDF uses. Among
other things, it already binds the *package* to asdf-user. Recent versions of SLIME
(2013-02 and later) know to do that when you C-c C-k when you use the slime-asdf
contrib.
• You shouldn’t use an in-package form if you’re keeping things simple. You should
only use in-package (and before it, a defpackage) when you’re going to define new
classes, functions, variables, macros, etc., in the .asd file, and want to thereby avoid
name clashes. Manuals for old versions of ASDF recommended use of such an idiom
in .asd files, but as of ASDF 3, we recommend that you don’t do that anymore,
and instead define any ASDF extensions in their own system, on which you can then
declare a dependency using :defsystem-depends-on. See Section 6.3 [The defsystem
grammar], page 16.
• More generally, you can always rely on symbols from packages asdf, common-lisp
and uiop being available in .asd files — most importantly including defsystem. It
is therefore redundant and in bad taste to use a package-prefixed asdf:defsystem
symbol in a .asd file. Just use (defsystem ...). Only package-prefix it when somehow
dynamically generating system definitions from a package that doesn’t already use the
ASDF package.
• asdf-user is actually only available starting since ASDF 3, but then again, ASDF 1
and 2 did crazy things with packages that ASDF 3 has stopped doing1 , and since all
implementations provide ASDF 3, you shouldn’t care about compatibility with ASDF
2. We do not support ASDF 2 anymore, and we recommend that neither should you.
• Starting with ASDF 3.1, asdf-user uses uiop, whereas in earlier variants of ASDF 3
it only used uiop/package. We recommend you either prefix use of UIOP functions
with the package prefix uiop:, or make sure your system :depends-on ((:version
"asdf" "3.1.2")) or has a #-asdf3.1 (error "MY-SYSTEM requires ASDF 3.1.2").
• Finally, we elided most metadata, but showed how you can have ASDF automatically
extract the system’s version from a source file. In this case, the 3rd subform of the 4th
form (note that Lisp uses 0-based indexing, English uses 1-based indexing). Presum-
ably, the 4th form looks like (defparameter *foo-version* "5.6.7").
6.3 The defsystem grammar

system-definition := ( defsystem system-designator system-option* )
system-designator := simple-component-name
| complex-component-name
# NOTE: Underscores are not permitted.

# see [Simple component names], page 18
simple-component-name := lower-case string | symbol
# see [Complex component names], page 19

complex-component-name := string | symbol
system-option := :defsystem-depends-on system-list

1
ASDF 1 and 2 (up until 2.26) used to dynamically create and delete temporary packages asdfN, one
for each .asd file, in a misguided attempt to thereby reduce name clashes; but it failed at that goal
and only made things more complex. ASDF 3 just uses a shared package asdf-user instead, and relies
on the usual Common Lisp conventions to avoid clashes. As far as package oddities go, you may just
notice that the asdf-user package also uses uiop/common-lisp, a variant of the common-lisp package
that papers over deficiencies in more obscure Common Lisp implementations; but unless you care about
Corman Lisp, GCL, Genera or MCL, you shouldn’t be concerned.
| :weakly-depends-on system-list
| :class class-name # see [System class names], page 19
| :build-pathname pathname-specifier
| :build-operation operation-name
| system-option/asdf3
| module-option
| option
# These are only available since ASDF 3 (actually its alpha release
# 2.27)
system-option/asdf3 := :homepage string
| :bug-tracker string
| :mailto string
| :long-name string
| :source-control source-control
| :version version-specifier
| :entry-point object # see [Entry point], page 24
source-control := ( keyword string )
module-option := :components component-list

| :serial [ t | nil ]
option := :description string

| :long-description string
| :author person-or-persons
| :maintainer person-or-persons
| :pathname pathname-specifier
| :default-component-class class-name
| :perform method-form
| :explain method-form
| :output-files method-form
| :operation-done-p method-form
| :if-feature feature-expression
| :depends-on ( dependency-def* )
| :in-order-to ( dependency+ )
person-or-persons := string | ( string+ )
system-list := ( simple-component-name* )
component-list := ( component-def* )
component-def := ( component-type simple-component-name option* )
component-type := :module | :file | :static-file | other-component-type

other-component-type := symbol-by-name # see [Component types], page 19
# This is used in :depends-on, as opposed to "dependency", which is used

# in :in-order-to
dependency-def := simple-component-name
| ( :feature feature-expression dependency-def ) # see [Feature
dependencies], page 22
| ( :version simple-component-name version-specifier )
| ( :require module-name )
# "dependency" is used in :in-order-to, as opposed to "dependency-def"

dependency := ( dependent-op requirement+ )
requirement := ( required-op required-component+ )
dependent-op := operation-name
required-op := operation-name
# NOTE: pathnames should be all lower case, and have no underscores,

# although hyphens are permitted.
pathname-specifier := pathname | string | symbol
version-specifier := string
| ( :read-file-form pathname-specifier form-specifier? )
| ( :read-file-line pathname-specifier line-specifier? )
line-specifier := :at integer # base zero
form-specifier := :at [ integer | ( integer+ ) ]
method-form := ( operation-name qual lambda-list &rest body )

qual := method-qualifier?
method-qualifier := :before | :after | :around
feature-expression := keyword
| ( :and feature-expression* )
| ( :or feature-expression* )
| ( :not feature-expression )
operation-name := symbol
6.3.1 System designators

System designators are either simple component names, or complex (“slashy”) component
names.
6.3.2 Simple component names (simple-component-name)

Simple component names may be written as either strings or symbols.
When using strings, use lower case exclusively.

Symbols will be interpreted as convenient shorthand for the string that is their
symbol-name, converted to lower case. Put differently, a symbol may be a simple
component name designator, but the simple component name itself is the string.
Never use underscores in component names, whether written as strings or symbols.
Never use slashes (“/”) in simple component names. A slash indicates a complex com-
ponent name; see below. Using a slash improperly will cause ASDF to issue a warning.
Violating these constraints by mixing case, or including underscores in component names,
may lead to systems or components being impossible to find, because component names are
interpreted as file names. These problems will definitely occur for users who have configured
ASDF using logical pathnames.
6.3.3 Complex component names

A complex component name is a master name followed by a slash, followed by a subsidiary
name. This allows programmers to put multiple system definitions in a single .asd file,
while still allowing ASDF to find these systems.
The master name of a complex system must be the same as the name of the .asd file.
The file foo.asd will contain the definition of the system "foo". However, it may also
contain definitions of subsidiary systems, such as "foo/test", "foo/docs", and so forth.
ASDF will “know” that if you ask it to load system "foo/test" it should look for that
system’s definition in foo.asd.
6.3.4 Component types

Component type names, even if expressed as keywords, will be looked up by name in the
current package and in the asdf package, if not found in the current package. So a compo-
nent type my-component-type, in the current package my-system-asd can be specified as
:my-component-type, or my-component-type.
system and its subclasses are not allowed as component types for such children compo-
nents.
6.3.5 System class names

A system class name will be looked up in the same way as a Component type (see above),
except that only system and its subclasses are allowed. Typically, one will not need to
specify a system class name, unless using a non-standard system class defined in some
ASDF extension, typically loaded through DEFSYSTEM-DEPENDS-ON, see below. For such
class names in the ASDF package, we recommend that the :class option be specified using
a keyword symbol, such as
:class :MY-NEW-SYSTEM-SUBCLASS
This practice will ensure that package name conflicts are avoided. Otherwise, the symbol
MY-NEW-SYSTEM-SUBCLASS will be read into the current package before it has been exported
from the ASDF extension loaded by :defsystem-depends-on, causing a name conflict in
the current package.
6.3.6 Defsystem depends on

The :defsystem-depends-on option to defsystem allows the programmer to specify an-
other ASDF-defined system or set of systems that must be loaded before the system defi-
nition is processed. Typically this is used to load an ASDF extension that is used in the
system definition.
6.3.7 Build-operation
The :build-operation option to defsystem allows the programmer to specify an operation
that will be applied, in place of load-op when make (see Section 5.2 [Convenience Functions],
page 10) is run on the system. The option value should be the name of an operation. E.g.,
:build-operation doc-op
This feature is experimental and largely untested. Use at your own risk.
6.3.8 Weakly depends on

We do NOT recommend you use this feature. If you are tempted to write a system foo
that weakly-depends-on a system bar, we recommend that you should instead write system
foo in a parametric way, and offer some special variable and/or some hook to specialize its
behaviour; then you should write a system foo+bar that does the hooking of things together.
The (deprecated) :weakly-depends-on option to defsystem allows the programmer to
specify another ASDF-defined system or set of systems that ASDF should try to load, but
need not load in order to be successful. Typically this is used if there are a number of
systems that, if present, could provide additional functionality, but which are not necessary
for basic function.
Currently, although it is specified to be an option only to defsystem, this option is
accepted at any component, but it probably only makes sense at the defsystem level.
Programmers are cautioned not to use this component option except at the defsystem
level, as this anomalous behaviour may be removed without warning.
6.3.9 Pathname specifiers

A pathname specifier (pathname-specifier) may be a pathname, a string or a symbol.
When no pathname specifier is given for a component, which is the usual case, the compo-
nent name itself is used.
If a string is given, which is the usual case, the string will be interpreted as a Unix-
style pathname where / characters will be interpreted as directory separators. Usually,
Unix-style relative pathnames are used (i.e. not starting with /, as opposed to absolute
pathnames); they are relative to the path of the parent component. Finally, depending on
the component-type, the pathname may be interpreted as either a file or a directory, and
if it’s a file, a file type may be added corresponding to the component-type, or else it will
be extracted from the string itself (if applicable).
For instance, the component-type :module wants a directory pathname, and so a
string "foo/bar" will be interpreted as the pathname #p"foo/bar/". On the other hand,
the component-type :file wants a file of type lisp, and so a string "foo/bar" will
be interpreted as the pathname #p"foo/bar.lisp", and a string "foo/bar.quux" will
be interpreted as the pathname #p"foo/bar.quux.lisp". Finally, the component-type
:static-file wants a file without specifying a type, and so a string "foo/bar" will be in-
terpreted as the pathname #p"foo/bar", and a string "foo/bar.quux" will be interpreted
as the pathname #p"foo/bar.quux".
ASDF interprets the string ".." as the pathname directory component word :back,
which when merged, goes back one level in the directory hierarchy.
If a symbol is given, it will be translated into a string, and downcased in the process.
The downcasing of symbols is unconventional, but was selected after some consideration.
The file systems we support either have lowercase as customary case (Unix, Mac, Windows)
or silently convert lowercase to uppercase (lpns), so this makes more sense than attempting
to use :case :common as argument to make-pathname, which is reported not to work on
some implementations.
Please avoid using underscores in system names, or component (module or file) names,
since underscores are not compatible with logical pathnames (see [Using logical pathnames],
page 22).
Pathname objects may be given to override the path for a component. Such ob-
jects are typically specified using reader macros such as #p or #.(make-pathname ...).
Note however, that #p... is a shorthand for #.(parse-namestring ...) and that the
behaviour of parse-namestring is completely non-portable, unless you are using Com-
mon Lisp logical-pathnames, which themselves involve other non-portable behaviour (see
[Using logical pathnames], page 22). Pathnames made with #.(make-pathname ...) can
usually be done more easily with the string syntax above. The only case that you really
need a pathname object is to override the component-type default file type for a given com-
ponent. Therefore, pathname objects should only rarely be used. Unhappily, ASDF 1 used
not to properly support parsing component names as strings specifying paths with directo-
ries, and the cumbersome #.(make-pathname ...) syntax had to be used. An alternative
to #. read-time evaluation is to use (eval ‘(defsystem ... ,pathname ...)).
Note that when specifying pathname objects, ASDF does not do any special interpreta-
tion of the pathname influenced by the component type, unlike the procedure for pathname-
specifying strings. On the one hand, you have to be careful to provide a pathname that
correctly fulfills whatever constraints are required from that component type (e.g. naming
a directory or a file with appropriate type); on the other hand, you can circumvent the file
type that would otherwise be forced upon you if you were specifying a string.
6.3.10 Version specifiers

Version specifiers are strings to be parsed as period-separated lists of integers. I.e., in the
example, "0.2.1" is to be interpreted, roughly speaking, as (0 2 1). In particular, version
"0.2.1" is interpreted the same as "0.0002.1", though the latter is not canonical and may
lead to a warning being issued. Also, "1.3" and "1.4" are both strictly uiop:version< to
"1.30", quite unlike what would have happened had the version strings been interpreted
as decimal fractions.
Instead of a string representing the version, the :version argument can be an
expression that is resolved to such a string using the following trivial domain-specific
language: in addition to being a literal string, it can be an expression of the form
(:read-file-form <pathname-or-string> [:at <access-at-specifier>]), or
(:read-file-line <pathname-or-string> [:at <access-at-specifier>]). As the
name suggests, the former will be resolved by reading a form in the specified pathname
(read as a subpathname of the current system if relative or a unix-namestring), and the
latter by reading a line. You may use a uiop:access-at specifier with the :at keyword,
by default the specifier is 0, meaning the first form/line is returned. For :read-file-form,
subforms can also be specified, with e.g. (1 2 2) specifying “the third subform (index 2) of
the third subform (index 2) of the second form (index 1)” in the file (mind the off-by-one
error in the English language).
System definers are encouraged to use version identifiers of the form x.y.z for major
version, minor version and patch level, where significant API incompatibilities are signaled
by an increased major number.
See Section 7.2.1 [Common attributes of components], page 37.
6.3.11 Require
Use the implementation’s own require to load the module-name.
It is good taste to use (:feature :implementation-name (:require module-name))
rather than #+implementation-name (:require module-name) to only depend on
the specified module on the specific implementation that provides it. See [Feature
dependencies], page 22.
6.3.12 Feature dependencies

A feature dependency is of the form (:feature feature-expression dependency) If the
feature-expression is satisfied by the running lisp at the time the system definition is parsed,
then the dependency will be added to the system’s dependencies. If the feature-expression
is not satisfied, then the feature dependency form is ignored.
Note that this means that :feature cannot be used to enforce a feature dependency for
the system in question. I.e., it cannot be used to require that a feature hold in order for
the system definition to be loaded. E.g., one cannot use (:feature :sbcl) to require that
a system only be used on SBCL.
Feature dependencies are not to be confused with the obsolete feature requirement (see
[feature requirement], page 24), or with if-feature.
6.3.13 Using logical pathnames

We do not generally recommend the use of logical pathnames, especially not so to newcomers
to Common Lisp. However, we do support the use of logical pathnames by old timers, when
such is their preference.
To use logical pathnames, you will have to provide a pathname object
as a :pathname specifier to components that use it, using such syntax as
#p"LOGICAL-HOST:absolute;path;to;component.lisp".
You only have to specify such logical pathname for your system or some top-level com-
ponent. Sub-components’ relative pathnames, specified using the string syntax for names,
will be properly merged with the pathnames of their parents. The specification of a log-
ical pathname host however is not otherwise directly supported in the ASDF syntax for
pathname specifiers as strings.
The asdf-output-translation layer will avoid trying to resolve and translate logical
pathnames. The advantage of this is that you can define yourself what translations you
want to use with the logical pathname facility. The disadvantage is that if you do not
define such translations, any system that uses logical pathnames will behave differently
under asdf-output-translations than other systems you use.
If you wish to use logical pathnames you will have to configure the translations yourself
before they may be used. ASDF currently provides no specific support for defining logical
pathname translations.
Note that the reasons we do not recommend logical pathnames are that (1) there is no
portable way to set up logical pathnames before they are used, (2) logical pathnames are
limited to only portably use a single character case, digits and hyphens. While you can
solve the first issue on your own, describing how to do it on each of fifteen implementations
supported by ASDF is more than we can document. As for the second issue, mind that the
limitation is notably enforced on SBCL, and that you therefore can’t portably violate the
limitations but must instead define some encoding of your own and add individual mappings
to name physical pathnames that do not fit the restrictions. This can notably be a problem
when your Lisp files are part of a larger project in which it is common to name files or
directories in a way that includes the version numbers of supported protocols, or in which
files are shared with software written in different programming languages where conventions
include the use of underscores, dots or CamelCase in pathnames.
6.3.14 Serial dependencies

If the :serial t option is specified for a module, ASDF will add dependencies for each child
component, on all the children textually preceding it. This is done as if by :depends-on.
:serial t
:components ((:file "a") (:file "b") (:file "c"))
is equivalent to
:components ((:file "a")
(:file "b" :depends-on ("a"))
(:file "c" :depends-on ("a" "b")))
6.3.15 Source location (:pathname)

The :pathname option is optional in all cases for systems defined via defsystem, and
generally is unnecessary. In the simple case, source files will be found in the same directory
as the system or, in the case of modules, in a subdirectory with the same name as the
module.
More specifically, ASDF follows a hairy set of rules that are designed so that
1. find-system will load a system from disk and have its pathname default to the right
place.
2. This pathname information will not be overwritten with *default-pathname-
defaults* (which could be somewhere else altogether) if the user loads up the .asd
file into his editor and interactively re-evaluates that form.
If a system is being loaded for the first time, its top-level pathname will be set to:
• The host/device/directory parts of *load-truename*, if it is bound.
• *default-pathname-defaults*, otherwise.
If a system is being redefined, the top-level pathname will be
• changed, if explicitly supplied or obtained from *load-truename* (so that an updated
source location is reflected in the system definition)
• changed if it had previously been set from *default-pathname-defaults*

• left as before, if it had previously been set from *load-truename* and
*load-truename* is currently unbound (so that a developer can evaluate a defsystem
form from within an editor without clobbering its source location)
6.3.16 if-feature option

This option allows you to specify a feature expression to be evaluated as if by #+ to con-
ditionally include a component in your build. If the expression is false, the component
is dropped as well as any dependency pointing to it. As compared to using #+ which is
expanded at read-time, this allows you to have an object in your component hierarchy that
can be used for manipulations beside building your project, and that is accessible to outside
code that wishes to reason about system structure.
Programmers should be careful to consider when the :if-feature is evaluated. Recall
that ASDF first computes a build plan, and then executes that plan. ASDF will check to
see whether or not a feature is present at planning time, not during the build. It follows
that one cannot use :if-feature to check features that are set during the course of the
build. It can only be used to check the state of features before any build operations have
been performed.
This option was added in ASDF 3. For more information, See [required-features],
page 37.
6.3.17 Entry point

The :entry-point option allows a developer to specify the entry point of an executable
program created by program-op.
When program-op is invoked, the form passed to this option is converted to a function
by uiop:ensure-function and bound to uiop:*image-entry-point*. Typically one will
specify a string, e.g. "foo:main", so that the executable starts with the foo:main function.
Note that using the symbol foo:main instead might not work because the foo package
doesn’t necessarily exist when ASDF reads the defsystem form. For more information on
program-op, see Section 7.1.1 [Predefined operations of ASDF], page 30.
6.3.18 feature requirement

This requirement was removed in ASDF 3.1. Please do not use it. In most cases,
:if-feature (see [if-feature option], page 24) will provide an adequate substitute.
The feature requirement used to ensure that a chain of component dependencies would
fail when a key feature was absent. Used in conjunction with :if-component-dep-fails
this provided a roundabout way to express conditional compilation.
6.4 Other code in .asd files

Files containing defsystem forms are regular Lisp files that are executed by load. Conse-
quently, you can put whatever Lisp code you like into these files. However, it is recommended
to keep such forms to a minimal, and to instead define defsystem extensions that you use
with :defsystem-depends-on.
If however, you might insist on including code in the .asd file itself, e.g., to examine and
adjust the compile-time environment, possibly adding appropriate features to *features*.
If so, here are some conventions we recommend you follow, so that users can control certain
details of execution of the Lisp in .asd files:
• Any informative output (other than warnings and errors, which are the condition sys-
tem’s to dispose of) should be sent to the standard CL stream *standard-output*, so
that users can easily control the disposition of output from ASDF operations.
6.5 The package-inferred-system extension

Starting with release 3.1.2, ASDF supports a one-package-per-file style of programming, in
which each file is its own system, and dependencies are deduced from the defpackage form
or its variant, uiop:define-package.
In this style of system definition, package names map to systems with the same name (in
lower case letters), and if a system is defined with :class package-inferred-system, then
system names that start with that name (using the slash / separator) refer to files under the
filesystem hierarchy where the system is defined. For instance, if system my-lib is defined
in /foo/bar/my-lib/my-lib.asd, then system my-lib/src/utility will be found in file
/foo/bar/my-lib/src/utility.lisp.
One package per file style was made popular by faslpath and quick-build, and at
the cost of stricter package discipline, may yield more maintainable code. This style is
used in ASDF itself (starting with ASDF 3), by lisp-interface-library, and a few other
libraries.
To use this style, choose a toplevel system name, e.g. my-lib, and create a file
my-lib.asd. Define my-lib using the :class :package-inferred-system option in its
defsystem. For instance:
;; This example is based on lil.asd of LISP-INTERFACE-LIBRARY.
#-asdf3.1 (error "MY-LIB requires ASDF 3.1 or later.")

(defsystem "my-lib"
:class :package-inferred-system
:depends-on ("my-lib/interface/all"
"my-lib/src/all"
"my-lib/extras/all")
:in-order-to ((test-op (load-op "my-lib/test/all")))
:perform (test-op (o c) (symbol-call :my-lib/test/all :test-suite)))
(defsystem "my-lib/test" :depends-on ("my-lib/test/all"))
(register-system-packages "my-lib/interface/all" '(:my-lib-interface))

(register-system-packages "my-lib/src/all" '(:my-lib-implementation))
(register-system-packages "my-lib/test/all" '(:my-lib-test))
(register-system-packages
"closer-mop"
'(:c2mop
:closer-common-lisp
:c2cl
:closer-common-lisp-user
:c2cl-user))
In the code above, the first form checks that we are using ASDF 3.1 or later, which provides
package-inferred-system. This is probably no longer necessary, since none of the major
lisp implementations provides an older version of ASDF.
The function register-system-packages must be called to register packages used or
provided by your system when the name of the system/file that provides the package is not
the same as the package name (converted to lower case).
Each file under the my-lib hierarchy will start with a package definition. The form
uiop:define-package is supported as well as defpackage. ASDF will compute dependen-
cies from the :use, :mix, and other importation clauses of this package definition. Take
the file interface/order.lisp as an example:
(uiop:define-package :my-lib/interface/order
(:use :closer-common-lisp
:my-lib/interface/definition
:my-lib/interface/base)
(:mix :fare-utils :uiop :alexandria)
(:export ...))
ASDF can tell that this file/system depends on system closer-mop (registered above),
my-lib/interface/definition, and my-lib/interface/base.
How can ASDF find the file interface/order.lisp from the toplevel system my-lib,
however? In the example above, interface/all.lisp (and other all.lisp) reexport all
the symbols exported from the packages at the same or lower levels of the hierarchy. This
can be easily done with uiop:define-package, which has many options that prove useful
in this context. For example:
(uiop:define-package :my-lib/interface/all
(:nicknames :my-lib-interface)
(:use :closer-common-lisp)
(:mix :fare-utils :uiop :alexandria)
(:use-reexport
:my-lib/interface/definition
:my-lib/interface/base
:my-lib/interface/order
:my-lib/interface/monad/continuation))
Thus the top level system need only depend on the my-lib/.../all systems because
ASDF detects interface/order.lisp and all other dependencies from all systems’
:use-reexport clauses, which effectively allow for “inheritance” of symbols being
exported.
ASDF also detects dependencies from :import-from clauses. You may thus import a
well-defined set of symbols from an existing package, and ASDF will know to load the
system that provides that package. In the following example, ASDF will infer that the
current system depends on foo/baz from the first :import-from. If you prefer to use any
such symbol fully qualified by a package prefix, you may declare a dependency on such a
package and its corresponding system via an :import-from clause with an empty list of
27
symbols. For example, if we preferred to use the name ‘foo/quux:bletch‘, the second, empty,
:import-from form would cause ASDF to load foo/quux.
(defpackage :foo/bar
(:use :cl)
(:import-from :foo/baz #:sym1 #:sym2)
(:import-from :foo/quux)
(:export ...))
Note that starting with ASDF 3.1.5.6 only, ASDF will look for source files under the
component-pathname (specified via the :pathname option), whereas earlier versions ignore
this option and use the system-source-directory where the .asd file resides.
28
7 The Object model of ASDF

ASDF is designed in an object-oriented way from the ground up. Both a system’s structure
and the operations that can be performed on systems follow an extensible protocol, allowing
programmers to add new behaviours to ASDF. For example, cffi adds support for special
FFI description files that interface with C libraries and for wrapper files that embed C code
in Lisp. asdf-jar supports creating Java JAR archives in ABCL. poiu supports compiling
code in parallel using background processes.
The key classes in ASDF are component and operation. A component represents an
individual source file or a group of source files, and the products (e.g., fasl files) produced
from it. An operation represents a transformation that can be performed on a component,
turning them from source files to intermediate results to final outputs. Components are
related by dependencies, specified in system definitions.
When ordered to operate with some operation on a component (usually a system),
ASDF will first compute a plan by traversing the dependency graph using function
make-plan.1 The resulting plan object contains an ordered list of actions. An action
is a pair of an operation and a component, representing a particular build step to be
performed. The ordering of the plan ensures that no action is performed before all its
dependencies have been fulfilled.2
In this chapter, we describe ASDF’s object-oriented protocol, the classes that make it
up, and the generic functions on those classes. These generic functions often take both an
operation and a component as arguments: much of the power and configurability of ASDF is
provided by this use of CLOS’s multiple dispatch. We will describe the built-in component
and operation classes, and explain how to extend the ASDF protocol by defining new classes
and methods for ASDF’s generic functions. We will also describe the many hooks that can
be configured to customize the behaviour of existing functions.
7.1 Operations
An operation object of the appropriate type is instantiated whenever the user wants to do
something with a system like
• compile all its files
• load the files into a running lisp environment
• copy its source files somewhere else
Operations can be invoked directly, or examined to see what their effects would be
without performing them. There are a bunch of methods specialised on operation and
component type that actually do the grunt work. Operations are invoked on systems via
operate (see [operate], page 29).
1
Historically, the function that built a plan was called traverse, and returned a list of actions; it was
deprecated in favor of make-plan (that returns a plan object) when the plan objects were introduced
with ASDF 3; the old function is kept for backward compatibility and debugging purposes only, and
may be removed in the near future.
2
The term action was used by Kent Pitman in his article, “The Description of Large Systems,” (see
[Bibliography], page 86), and we suspect might be traced to make. Although the term was only used by
ASDF hackers starting with ASDF 2, the concept was there since the very beginning of ASDF 1, just
not clearly articulated.
Chapter 7: The Object model of ASDF 29
ASDF contains a number of pre-defined operation classes for common, and even fairly
uncommon tasks that you might want to do with it. In addition, ASDF contains “abstract”
operation classes that programmers can use as building blocks to define ASDF extensions.
We discuss these in turn below.
Operations are invoked on systems via operate.
operate operation component &rest initargs &key force [Generic function]
force-not verbose &allow-other-keys
oos operation component &rest initargs &key [Generic function]
&allow-other-keys
operate invokes operation on system. oos is a synonym for operate (it stands for
operate-on-system).
operation is an operation designator: it can be an operation object itself, or, typically,
a symbol that is passed to make-operation (which will call make-instance), to create
the operation object. component is a component designator: it can be a component
object itself, or, typically, a string or symbol (to be string-downcased) that names
a system, more rarely a list of strings or symbols that designate a subcomponent of
a system.
The ability to pass initargs to make-operation is now deprecated, and will be re-
moved. For more details, see [make-operation], page 29. Note that dependencies may
cause the operation to invoke other operations on the system or its components: the
new operations may or may not be created with the same initargs as the original one
(for the moment).
If force is :all, then all systems are forced to be recompiled even if not modified
since last compilation. If force is t, then only the system being loaded is forced to
be recompiled even if not modified since last compilation, but other systems are not
affected. If force is a list, then it specifies a list of systems that are forced to be
recompiled even if not modified since last compilation. If force-not is :all, then all
systems are forced not to be recompiled even if modified since last compilation. If
force-not is t, then all systems but the system being loaded are forced not to be
recompiled even if modified since last compilation (note: this was changed in ASDF
3.1.2). If force-not is a list, then it specifies a list of systems that are forced not to
be recompiled even if modified since last compilation.
Both force and force-not apply to systems that are dependencies and were already
compiled. force-not takes precedences over force, as it should, really, but unhappily
only since ASDF 3.1.2. Moreover, systems which have been registered as immutable
by register-immutable-system (since ASDF 3.1.5) are always considered forced-
not, and even their .asd are not refreshed from the filesystem. See Section 11.3
[Miscellaneous Functions], page 63.
To see what operate would do, you can use:
(asdf:traverse operation-class system-name)
make-operation operation-class &rest initargs [Function]
The initargs are passed to make-instance call when creating the operation object.
Note:initargs for operations are now deprecated, and will be removed from ASDF
in the near future.
Note: operation instances must never be created using make-instance directly:

only through make-operation. Attempts to directly make operation instances will
cause a run-time error.
7.1.1 Predefined operations of ASDF

All the operations described in this section are in the asdf package. They are invoked via
the operate generic function.
(asdf:operate ’asdf:operation-name :system-name {operation-options ...})
compile-op [Operation]
This operation compiles the specified component. A cl-source-file will be
compile-file’d. All the children and dependencies of a system or module will be
recursively compiled by compile-op.
compile-op depends on prepare-op which itself depends on a load-op of all of a
component’s dependencies, as well as of its parent’s dependencies. When operate is
called on compile-op, all these dependencies will be loaded as well as compiled; yet,
some parts of the system main remain unloaded, because nothing depends on them.
Use load-op to load a system.
load-op [Operation]
This operation loads the compiled code for a specified component. A cl-source-
file will have its compiled fasl loaded, which fasl is the output of compile-op that
load-op depends on.
load-op will recursively load all the children of a system or module.
load-op also depends on prepare-op which itself depends on a load-op of all of a
component’s dependencies, as well as of its parent’s dependencies.
prepare-op [Operation]
This operation ensures that the dependencies of a component and its recursive par-
ents are loaded (as per load-op), as a prerequisite before compile-op and load-op
operations may be performed on a given component.
load-source-op [Operation]
prepare-source-op [Operation]
load-source-op will load the source for the files in a module rather than the compiled
fasl output. It has a prepare-source-op analog to prepare-op, that ensures the
dependencies are themselves loaded via load-source-op.
test-op [Operation]
This operation will perform some tests on the module. The default method will
do nothing. The default dependency is to require load-op to be performed on the
module first. Its default operation-done-p method returns nil, which means that
the operation is never done – we assume that if you invoke the test-op, you want to
test the system, even if you have already done so.
The results of this operation are not defined by ASDF. It has proven difficult to define
how the test operation should signal its results to the user in a way that is compatible
with all of the various test libraries and test techniques in use in the community, and
given the fact that ASDF operations do not return a value indicating success or failure.
For those willing to go to the effort, we suggest defining conditions to signal when a
test-op fails, and storing in those conditions information that describes which tests
fail.
People typically define a separate test system to hold the tests. Doing this avoids
unnecessarily adding a test framework as a dependency on a library. For example,
one might have
(defsystem "foo"
:in-order-to ((test-op (test-op "foo/test")))
...)
(defsystem "foo/test"
:depends-on ("foo" "fiveam") ; fiveam is a test framework library
...)
Then one defines perform methods on test-op such as the following:
(defsystem "foo/test"
:depends-on ("foo" "fiveam") ; fiveam is a test framework library
:perform (test-op (o s)
(uiop:symbol-call :fiveam ’#:run!
(uiop:find-symbol* ’#:foo-test-suite
:foo-tests)))
...)
compile-bundle-op [Operation]
monolithic-compile-bundle-op [Operation]
load-bundle-op [Operation]
monolithic-load-bundle-op [Operation]
deliver-asd-op [Operation]
monolithic-deliver-asd-op [Operation]
lib-op [Operation]
monolithic-lib-op [Operation]
dll-op [Operation]
monolithic-dll-op [Operation]
image-op [Operation]
program-op [Operation]
These are “bundle” operations, that can create a single-file “bundle” for all the con-
tents of each system in an application, or for the entire application.
compile-bundle-op will create a single fasl file for each of the systems needed,
grouping all its many fasls in one, so you can deliver each system as a single fasl.
monolithic-compile-bundle-op will create a single fasl file for the target system
and all its dependencies, so you can deliver your entire application as a single fasl.
load-bundle-op will load the output of compile-bundle-op. Note that if the output
is not up-to-date, compile-bundle-op may load the intermediate fasls as a side-effect.
Bundling fasls together matters a lot on ECL, where the dynamic linking involved
in loading tens of individual fasls can be noticeably more expensive than loading a
single one.
NB: compile-bundle-op, monolithic-compile-bundle-op, load-bundle-op,

monolithic-load-bundle-op, deliver-asd-op, monolithic-deliver-asd-op
were respectively called fasl-op, monolithic-fasl-op, load-fasl-op,
monolithic-load-fasl-op, binary-op, monolithic-binary-op before ASDF 3.1.
The old names still exist for backward compatibility, though they poorly label what
is going on.
Once you have created a fasl with compile-bundle-op, you can use
precompiled-system to deliver it in a way that is compatible with clients having
dependencies on your system, whether it is distributed as source or as a single
binary; the .asd file to be delivered with the fasl will look like this:
(defsystem :mysystem :class :precompiled-system
:fasl (some expression that will evaluate to a pathname))
Or you can use deliver-asd-op to let ASDF create such a system for you as well
as the compile-bundle-op output, or monolithic-deliver-asd-op. This allows
you to deliver code for your systems or applications as a single file. Of course, if
you want to test the result in the current image, before you try to use any newly
created .asd files, you should not forget to (asdf:clear-configuration) or at
least (asdf:clear-source-registry), so it re-populates the source-registry from
the filesystem.
The program-op operation will create an executable program from the specified
system and its dependencies. You can use UIOP for its pre-image-dump hooks,
its post-image-restore hooks, and its access to command-line arguments. And
you can specify an entry point my-app:main by specifying in your defsystem
the option :entry-point "my-app:main". Depending on your implementation,
running (asdf:operate ’asdf:program-op :my-app) may quit the current Lisp
image upon completion. See the example in test/hello-world-example.asd
and test/hello.lisp, as built and tested by test/test-program.script and
test/make-hello-world.lisp. image-op will dump an image that may not be
standalone and does not start its own function, but follows the usual execution
convention of the underlying Lisp, just with more code pre-loaded, for use as an
intermediate build result or with a wrapper invocation script.
There is also lib-op for building a linkable .a file (Windows: .lib) from all linkable
object dependencies (FFI files, and on ECL, Lisp files too), and its monolithic equiva-
lent monolithic-lib-op. And there is also dll-op (respectively its monolithic equiv-
alent monolithic-dll-op) for building a linkable .so file (Windows: .dll, MacOS
X: .dynlib) to create a single dynamic library for all the extra FFI code to be linked
into each of your systems (respectively your entire application).
All these “bundle” operations are available since ASDF 3 on all actively supported
Lisp implementations, but may be unavailable on unmaintained legacy implementa-
tions. This functionality was previously available for select implementations, as part
of a separate system asdf-bundle, itself descended from the ECL-only asdf-ecl.
The pathname of the output of bundle operations is subject to output-translation as
usual, unless the operation is equal to the :build-operation argument to defsystem.
This behaviour is not very satisfactory and may change in the future. Maybe you
have suggestions on how to better configure it?
concatenate-source-op [Operation]
monolithic-concatenate-source-op [Operation]
load-concatenated-source-op [Operation]
compile-concatenated-source-op [Operation]
load-compiled-concatenated-source-op [Operation]
monolithic-load-concatenated-source-op [Operation]
monolithic-compile-concatenated-source-op [Operation]
monolithic-load-compiled-concatenated-source-op [Operation]
These operations, as their respective names indicate, will concatenate all the
cl-source-file source files in a system (or in a system and all its dependencies, if
monolithic), in the order defined by dependencies, then load the result, or compile
and then load the result.
These operations are useful to deliver a system or application as a single source file,
and for testing that said file loads properly, or compiles and then loads properly.
ASDF itself is delivered as a single source file this way, using monolithic-concatenate-
source-op, prepending a prelude and the uiop library before the asdf/defsystem
system itself.
7.1.2 Creating new operations

ASDF was designed to be extensible in an object-oriented fashion. To teach ASDF new
tricks, a programmer can implement the behaviour he wants by creating a subclass of
operation.
ASDF’s pre-defined operations are in no way “privileged”, but it is requested that de-
velopers never use the asdf package for operations they develop themselves. The rationale
for this rule is that we don’t want to establish a “global asdf operation name registry”, but
also want to avoid name clashes.
Your operation must usually provide methods for one or more of the following generic
functions:
• perform Unless your operation, like prepare-op, is for dependency propagation only,
the most important function for which to define a method is usually perform, which
will be called to perform the operation on a specified component, after all dependencies
have been performed.
The perform method must call input-files and output-files (see below) to locate
its inputs and outputs, because the user is allowed to override the method or tweak the
output-translation mechanism. Perform should only use the primary value returned by
output-files. If one and only one output file is expected, it can call output-file
that checks that this is the case and returns the first and only list element.
• output-files If your perform method has any output, you must define a method for
this function. for ASDF to determine where the outputs of performing operation lie.
Your method may return two values, a list of pathnames, and a boolean. If the boolean
is nil (or you fail to return multiple values), then enclosing :around methods may
translate these pathnames, e.g. to ensure object files are somehow stored in some
implementation-dependent cache. If the boolean is t then the pathnames are marked
not be translated by the enclosing :around method.
• component-depends-on If the action of performing the operation on a component has

dependencies, you must define a method on component-depends-on.
Your method will take as specialized arguments an operation and a component which
together identify an action, and return a list of entries describing actions that this
action depends on. The format of entries is described below.
It is strongly advised that you should always append the results of (call-next-method)
to the results of your method, or “interesting” failures will likely occur, unless you’re
a true specialist of ASDF internals. It is unhappily too late to compatibly use the
append method combination, but conceptually that’s the protocol that is being man-
ually implemented.
Each entry returned by component-depends-on is itself a list.
The first element of an entry is an operation designator: either an operation object
designating itself, or a symbol that names an operation class (that ASDF will instanti-
ate using make-operation). For instance, load-op, compile-op and prepare-op are
common such names, denoting the respective operations.
The rest of each entry is a list of component designators: either a component object
designating itself, or an identifier to be used with find-component. find-component
will be called with the current component’s parent as parent, and the identifier as
second argument. The identifier is typically a string, a symbol (to be downcased as per
coerce-name), or a list of strings or symbols. In particular, the empty list nil denotes
the parent itself.
An operation may provide methods for the following generic functions:
• input-files A method for this function is often not needed, since ASDF has a pretty
clever default input-files mechanism. You only need create a method if there are mul-
tiple ultimate input files. Most operations inherit from selfward-operation, which
appropriately sets the input-files to include the source file itself.
input-files operation component [Function]
Return a list of pathnames that represent the input to operation performed on
component.
• operation-done-p You only need to define a method on that function if you can detect
conditions that invalidate previous runs of the operation, even though no filesystem
timestamp has changed, in which case you return nil (the default is t).
For instance, the method for test-op always returns nil, so that tests are always run
afresh. Of course, the test-op for your system could depend on a deterministically
repeatable test-report-op, and just read the results from the report files, in which
case you could have this method return t.
Operations that print output should send that output to the standard CL stream
*standard-output*, as the Lisp compiler and loader do.
7.2 Components
A component represents an individual source file or a group of source files, and the things
that get transformed into. A system is a component at the top level of the component
hierarchy, that can be found via find-system. A source-file is a component representing
a single source-file and the successive output files into which it is transformed. A module is
an intermediate component itself grouping several other components, themselves source-files
or further modules.
A system designator is a system itself, or a string or symbol that behaves just like any
other component name (including with regard to the case conversion rules for component
names).
A component designator, relative to a base component, is either a component itself, or
a string or symbol, or a list of designators.
find-system system-designator &optional (error-p t) [Function]

Given a system designator, find-system finds and returns a system. If no system is
found, an error of type missing-component is thrown, or nil is returned if error-p
is false.
To find and update systems, find-system funcalls each element in the
*system-definition-search-functions* list, expecting a pathname to be
returned, or a system object, from which a pathname may be extracted, and that
will be registered. The resulting pathname (if any) is loaded if one of the following
conditions is true:
• there is no system of that name in memory
• the pathname is different from that which was previously loaded
• the file’s last-modified time exceeds the last-modified time of the system in
memory
When system definitions are loaded from .asd files, they are implicitly loaded into
the ASDF-USER package, which uses ASDF, UIOP and UIOP/COMMON-LISP3 Programmers
who do anything non-trivial in a .asd file, such as defining new variables, functions
or classes, should include defpackage and in-package forms in this file, so they will
not overwrite each others’ extensions. Such forms might also help the files behave
identically if loaded manually with cl:load for development or debugging, though
we recommend you use the function asdf::load-asd instead, which the slime-asdf
contrib knows about.
The default value of *system-definition-search-functions* is a list of three func-
tions. The first function looks in each of the directories given by evaluating members
of *central-registry* for a file whose name is the name of the system and whose
type is asd; the first such file is returned, whether or not it turns out to actually
define the appropriate system. The second function does something similar, for the
directories specified in the source-registry, but searches the filesystem only once
and caches its results. The third function makes the package-inferred-system
extension work, see Section 6.5 [The package-inferred-system extension], page 25.
Because of the way these search functions are defined, you should put the definition
for a system foo in a file named foo.asd, in a directory that is in the central registry
or which can be found using the source registry configuration.
3
Note that between releases 2.27 and 3.0.3, only UIOP/PACKAGE, not all of UIOP, was used; if you want
your code to work with releases earlier than 3.1.2, you may have to explicitly define a package that uses
UIOP, or use proper package prefix to your symbols, as in uiop:version<.
It is often useful to define multiple systems in a same file, but ASDF can only locate
a system’s definition file based on the system name. For this reason, ASDF 3’s sys-
tem search algorithm has been extended to allow a file foo.asd to contain secondary
systems named foo/bar, foo/baz, foo/quux, etc., in addition to the primary system
named foo. The first component of a system name, separated by the slash character,
/, is called the primary name of a system. The primary name may be extracted by
function asdf::primary-system-name; when ASDF 3 is told to find a system whose
name has a slash, it will first attempt to load the corresponding primary system,
and will thus see any such definitions, and/or any definition of a package-inferred-
system.4 If your file foo.asd also defines systems that do not follow this convention,
e.g., a system named foo-test, ASDF will not be able to automatically locate a def-
inition for these systems, and will only see their definition if you explicitly find or
load the primary system using e.g. (asdf:find-system "foo") before you try to use
them. We strongly recommend against this practice, though it is currently supported
for backward compatibility.
primary-system-name name [Function]
Internal (not exported) function, asdf::primary-system-name. Returns the primary
system name (the portion before the slash, /, in a secondary system name) from name.
locate-system name [Function]
This function should typically not be invoked directly. It is exported as part of the
API only for programmers who wish to provide their own *system-definition-
search-functions*.
Given a system name designator, try to locate where to load the system definition
from. Returns five values: foundp, found-system, pathname, previous, and previous-
time. foundp is true when a system was found, either a new as yet unregistered one,
or a previously registered one. The found-system return value will be a system object,
if a system definition is found in your source registry. The system definition will not
be loaded if it hasn’t been loaded already. pathname when not null is a path from
which to load the system, either associated with found-system, or with the previous
system. If previous is not null, it will be a previously loaded system object of the
same name (note that the system definition is previously-loaded: the system itself
may or may not be). previous-time when not null is the timestamp of the previous
system definition file, at the time when the previous system definition was loaded.
For example, if your current registry has foo.asd in /current/path/to/foo.asd, but
system foo was previously loaded from /previous/path/to/foo.asd then locate-
system will return the following values:
1. foundp will be t,
2. found-system will be nil,
3. pathname will be #p"/current/path/to/foo.asd",
4. previous will be an object of type SYSTEM with system-source-file slot value
of #p"/previous/path/to/foo.asd"
4
ASDF 2.26 and earlier versions do not support this primary system name convention. With these
versions of ASDF you must explicitly load foo.asd before you can use system foo/bar defined therein,
e.g. using (asdf:find-system "foo"). We do not support ASDF 2, and recommend that you should
upgrade to ASDF 3.
5. previous-time will be the timestamp of #p"/previous/path/to/foo.asd" at the

time it was loaded.
find-component base path [Function]
Given a base component (or designator for such), and a path, find the component
designated by the path starting from the base.
If path is a component object, it designates itself, independently from the base.
If path is a string, or symbol denoting a string via coerce-name, then base is re-
solved to a component object, which must be a system or module, and the designated
component is the child named by the path.
If path is a cons cell, find-component with the base and the car of the path, and
the resulting object is used as the base for a tail call to find-component with the
car of the path.
If base is a component object, it designates itself.
If base is null, then path is used as the base, with nil as the path.
If base is a string, or symbol denoting a string via coerce-name, it designates a
system as per find-system.
If base is a cons cell, it designates the component found by find-component with its
car as base and cdr as path.
7.2.1 Common attributes of components

All components, regardless of type, have the following attributes. All attributes except
name are optional.
7.2.1.1 Name
A component name is a string or a symbol. If a symbol, its name is taken and lowercased.
This translation is performed by the exported function coerce-name.
Unless overridden by a :pathname attribute, the name will be interpreted as a pathname
specifier according to a Unix-style syntax. See [Pathname specifiers], page 20.
7.2.1.2 Version identifier

This optional attribute specifies a version for the current component. The version should
typically be a string of integers separated by dots, for example ‘1.0.11’. See [Version
specifiers], page 21.
A version may then be queried by the generic function version-satisfies, to see if
:version dependencies are satisfied, and when specifying dependencies, a constraint of
minimal version to satisfy can be specified using e.g. (:version "mydepname" "1.0.11").
Note that in the wild, we typically see version numbering only on components of type
system. Presumably it is much less useful within a given system, wherein the library author
is responsible to keep the various files in synch.
7.2.1.3 Required features

Traditionally defsystem users have used #+ reader conditionals to include or exclude specific
per-implementation files. For example, CFFI, the portable C foreign function interface
contained lines like:
#+sbcl (:file "cffi-sbcl")

An unfortunate side effect of this approach is that no single implementation can read the
entire system. This causes problems if, for example, one wished to design an archive-op
that would create an archive file containing all the sources, since for example the file
cffi-sbcl.lisp above would be invisible when running the archive-op on any imple-
mentation other than SBCL.
Starting with ASDF 3, components may therefore have an :if-feature option. The
value of this option should be a feature expression using the same syntax as #+ does. If that
feature expression evaluates to false, any reference to the component will be ignored during
compilation, loading and/or linking. Since the expression is read by the normal reader, you
must explicitly prefix your symbols with : so they be read as keywords; this is as contrasted
with the #+ syntax that implicitly reads symbols in the keyword package by default.
For instance, :if-feature (:and :x86 (:or :sbcl :cmu :scl)) specifies that the given
component is only to be compiled and loaded when the implementation is SBCL, CMUCL
or Scieneer CL on an x86 machine. You cannot write it as :if-feature (and x86 (or sbcl
cmu scl)) since the symbols would not be read as keywords.
See [if-feature option], page 24.
7.2.1.4 Dependencies
This attribute specifies dependencies of the component on its siblings. It is optional but
often necessary.
There is an excitingly complicated relationship between the initarg and the method that
you use to ask about dependencies
Dependencies are between (operation component) pairs. In your initargs for the compo-
nent, you can say
:in-order-to ((compile-op (load-op "a" "b") (compile-op "c"))
(load-op (load-op "foo")))
This means the following things:
• before performing compile-op on this component, we must perform load-op on a and
b, and compile-op on c,
• before performing load-op, we have to load foo
The syntax is approximately
(this-op @{(other-op required-components)@}+)
simple-component-name := string
| symbol
required-components := simple-component-name
| (required-components required-components)
component-name := simple-component-name
| (:version simple-component-name minimum-version-object)
Side note:
This is on a par with what ACL defsystem does. mk-defsystem is less general: it has an
implied dependency
for all source file x, (load x) depends on (compile x)
and using a :depends-on argument to say that b depends on a actually means that
(compile b) depends on (load a)
This is insufficient for e.g. the McCLIM system, which requires that all the files are
loaded before any of them can be compiled ]
End side note
In ASDF, the dependency information for a given component and operation can be
queried using (component-depends-on operation component), which returns a list
((load-op "a") (load-op "b") (compile-op "c") ...)
component-depends-on can be subclassed for more specific component/operation types:
these need to (call-next-method) and append the answer to their dependency, unless they
have a good reason for completely overriding the default dependencies.
If it weren’t for CLISP, we’d be using LIST method combination to do this transparently.
But, we need to support CLISP. If you have the time for some CLISP hacking, I’m sure
they’d welcome your fixes.
A minimal version can be specified for a component you depend on (typically
another system), by specifying (:version "other-system" "1.2.3") instead of simply
"other-system" as the dependency. See the discussion of the semantics of :version in
the defsystem grammar.
7.2.1.5 pathname
This attribute is optional and if absent (which is the usual case), the component name will
be used.
See [Pathname specifiers], page 20, for an explanation of how this attribute is interpreted.
Note that the defsystem macro (used to create a “top-level” system) does additional
processing to set the filesystem location of the top component in that system. This is
detailed elsewhere. See Chapter 6 [Defining systems with defsystem], page 13.
To find the CL pathname corresponding to a component, use
component-pathname component [Function]

Returns the pathname corresponding to component. For components such as source
files, this will be a filename pathname. For example:
CL-USER> (asdf:component-pathname (asdf:find-system "xmls"))
#P"/Users/rpg/lisp/xmls/"
and
CL-USER> (asdf:component-pathname
(asdf:find-component
(asdf:find-system "xmls") "xmls"))
#P"/Users/rpg/lisp/xmls/xmls.lisp"
7.2.1.6 properties
This attribute is optional.
Packaging systems often require information about files or systems in addition to that
specified by ASDF’s pre-defined component attributes. Programs that create vendor pack-
ages out of ASDF systems therefore have to create “placeholder” information to satisfy these
systems. Sometimes the creator of an ASDF system may know the additional information
and wish to provide it directly.
(component-property component property-name) and associated setf method will al-
low the programmatic update of this information. Property names are compared as if by
EQL, so use symbols or keywords or something.
7.2.2 Pre-defined subclasses of component

source-file [Component]
A source file is any file that the system does not know how to generate from other
components of the system.
Note that this is not necessarily the same thing as “a file containing data that is
typically fed to a compiler”. If a file is generated by some pre-processor stage (e.g.
a .h file from .h.in by autoconf) then it is not, by this definition, a source file.
Conversely, we might have a graphic file that cannot be automatically regenerated,
or a proprietary shared library that we received as a binary: these do count as source
files for our purposes.
Subclasses of source-file exist for various languages. FIXME: describe these.
module [Component]
A module is a collection of sub-components.
A module component has the following extra initargs:
• :components the components contained in this module
• :default-component-class All children components which don’t specify their
class explicitly are inferred to be of this type.
• :if-component-dep-fails This attribute was removed in ASDF 3. Do not use
it. Use :if-feature instead (see [required-features], page 37, and see [if-feature
option], page 24).
• :serial When this attribute is set, each subcomponent of this component is as-
sumed to depend on all subcomponents before it in the list given to :components,
i.e. all of them are loaded before a compile or load operation is performed on it.
The default operation knows how to traverse a module, so most operations will not
need to provide methods specialised on modules.
module may be subclassed to represent components such as foreign-language linked
libraries or archive files.
system [Component]
system is a subclass of module.
A system is a module with a few extra attributes for documentation purposes; these
are given elsewhere. See Section 6.3 [The defsystem grammar], page 16.
Users can create new classes for their systems: the default defsystem macro takes a
:class keyword argument.
7.2.3 Creating new component types

New component types are defined by subclassing one of the existing component classes and
specializing methods on the new component class.
As an example, suppose we have some implementation-dependent functionality that we
want to isolate in one subdirectory per Lisp implementation our system supports. We create
a subclass of cl-source-file:
(defclass unportable-cl-source-file (cl-source-file)
())
Function asdf:implementation-type (exported since 2.014.14) gives us the name
of the subdirectory. All that’s left is to define how to calculate the pathname of an
unportable-cl-source-file.
(defmethod component-pathname ((component unportable-cl-source-file))
(merge-pathnames*
(parse-unix-namestring (format nil "~(~A~)/" (asdf:implementation-type)))
(call-next-method)))
The new component type is used in a defsystem form in this way:
(defsystem :foo
:components
((:file "packages")
...
(:unportable-cl-source-file "threads"
:depends-on ("packages" ...))
...
)
7.3 Dependencies
To be successfully build-able, this graph of actions must be acyclic. If, as a user, extender
or implementer of ASDF, you introduce a cycle into the dependency graph, ASDF will
fail loudly. To clearly distinguish the direction of dependencies, ASDF 3 uses the words
requiring and required as applied to an action depending on the other: the requiring action
depends-on the completion of all required actions before it may itself be performed.
Using the defsystem syntax, users may easily express direct dependencies along the
graph of the object hierarchy: between a component and its parent, its children, and its
siblings. By defining custom CLOS methods, you can express more elaborate dependencies
as you wish. Most common operations, such as load-op, compile-op or load-source-
op are automatically propagate “downward” the component hierarchy and are “covariant”
with it: to act the operation on the parent module, you must first act it on all the children
components, with the action on the parent being parent of the action on each child. Other
operations, such as prepare-op and prepare-source-op (introduced in ASDF 3) are auto-
matically propagated “upward” the component hierarchy and are “contravariant” with it:
to perform the operation of preparing for compilation of a child component, you must per-
form the operation of preparing for compilation of its parent component, and so on, ensuring
that all the parent’s dependencies are (compiled and) loaded before the child component
may be compiled and loaded. Yet other operations, such as test-op or load-bundle-op
remain at the system level, and are not propagated along the hierarchy, but instead do
something global on the system.
7.4 Functions
version-satisfies version version-spec [Function]
Does version satisfy the version-spec. A generic function. ASDF provides built-in
methods for version being a component or string. version-spec should be a string.
If it’s a component, its version is extracted as a string before further processing.
A version string satisfies the version-spec if after parsing, the former is no older than
the latter. Therefore "1.9.1", "1.9.2" and "1.10" all satisfy "1.9.1", but "1.8.4"
or "1.9" do not. For more information about how version-satisfies parses and
interprets version strings and specifications, see [Version specifiers], page 21, and
Section 7.2.1 [Common attributes of components], page 37.
Note that in versions of ASDF prior to 3.0.1, including the entire ASDF 1 and ASDF
2 series, version-satisfies would also require that the version and the version-spec
have the same major version number (the first integer in the list); if the major version
differed, the version would be considered as not matching the spec. But that feature
was not documented, therefore presumably not relied upon, whereas it was a nuisance
to several users. Starting with ASDF 3.0.1, version-satisfies does not treat the
major version number specially, and returns T simply if the first argument designates
a version that isn’t older than the one specified as a second argument. If needs be, the
(:version ...) syntax for specifying dependencies could be in the future extended
to specify an exclusive upper bound for compatible versions as well as an inclusive
lower bound.
43
8 Controlling where ASDF searches for systems
8.1 Configurations
Configurations specify paths where to find system files.
1. The search registry may use some hardcoded wrapping registry specification. This
allows some implementations (notably SBCL) to specify where to find some special
implementation-provided systems that need to precisely match the version of the im-
plementation itself.
2. An application may explicitly initialize the source-registry configuration using the con-
figuration API (see Chapter 8 [Configuration API], page 43, below) in which case this
takes precedence. It may itself compute this configuration from the command-line,
from a script, from its own configuration file, etc.
3. The source registry will be configured from the environment variable CL_SOURCE_
REGISTRY if it exists.
4. The source registry will be configured from user configuration file $XDG_
CONFIG_DIRS/common-lisp/source-registry.conf (which defaults to
~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf) if it exists.
5. The source registry will be configured from user configuration directory
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/ (which defaults to
~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/) if it exists.
6. The source registry will be configured from default user configuration trees
~/common-lisp/ (since ASDF 3.1.2 only), ~/.sbcl/systems/ (on SBCL only),
$XDG_DATA_HOME/common-lisp/systems/ (no recursion, link farm) $XDG_
DATA_HOME/common-lisp/source/. The XDG_DATA_HOME directory defaults to
~/.local/share/. On Windows, the local-appdata and appdata directories are
used instead.
7. The source registry will be configured from system configuration file
/etc/common-lisp/source-registry.conf if it exists.
8. The source registry will be configured from system configuration directory
/etc/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/ if it exists.
9. The source registry will be configured from a default configuration. This configura-
tion may allow for implementation-specific systems to be found, for systems to be
found the current directory (at the time that the configuration is initialized) as well
as :directory entries for $XDG_DATA_DIRS/common-lisp/systems/ and :tree en-
tries for $XDG_DATA_DIRS/common-lisp/source/, where XDG_DATA_DIRS defaults to
/usr/local/share and /usr/share on Unix, and the common-appdata directory on
Windows.
10. The source registry may include implementation-dependent directories that correspond
to implementation-provided extensions.
Each of these configurations is specified as an s-expression in a trivial domain-specific
language (defined below). Additionally, a more shell-friendly syntax is available for the
environment variable (defined yet below).
Chapter 8: Controlling where ASDF searches for systems 44
Each of these configurations is only used if the previous configuration explicitly or im-
plicitly specifies that it includes its inherited configuration.
Additionally, some implementation-specific directories may be automatically prepended
to whatever directories are specified in configuration files, no matter if the last one inherits
or not.
8.2 Truenames and other dangers

One great innovation of the original ASDF was its ability to leverage CL:TRUENAME to locate
where your source code was and where to build it, allowing for symlink farms as a simple
but effective configuration mechanism that is easy to control programmatically. ASDF 3
still supports this configuration style, and it is enabled by default; however we recommend
you instead use our source-registry configuration mechanism described below, because it is
easier to setup in a portable way across users and implementations.
Additionally, some people dislike truename, either because it is very slow on their system,
or because they are using content-addressed storage where the truename of a file is related
to a digest of its individual contents, and not to other files in the same intended project. For
these people, ASDF 3 allows to eschew the TRUENAME mechanism, by setting the variable
asdf:*resolve-symlinks* to nil.
PS: Yes, if you haven’t read Vernor Vinge’s short but great classic “True Names... and
Other Dangers” then you’re in for a treat.
8.3 XDG base directory

Note that we purport to respect the XDG base directory specification as to where config-
uration files are located, where data files are located, where output file caches are located.
Mentions of XDG variables refer to that document.
http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
This specification allows the user to specify some environment variables to customize
how applications behave to his preferences.
On Windows platforms, even when not using Cygwin, and starting with ASDF 3.1.5,
we still do a best effort at following the XDG base directory specification, even though it
doesn’t exactly fit common practice for Windows applications. However, we replace the fixed
Unix paths ~/.local, /usr/local and /usr with their rough Windows equivalent Local
AppData, AppData, Common AppData, etc. Since support for querying the Windows registry
is not possible to do in reasonable amounts of portable Common Lisp code, ASDF 3 relies
on the environment variables that Windows usually exports, and are hopefully in synch
with the Windows registry. If you care about the details, see uiop/configuration.lisp
and don’t hesitate to suggest improvements.
8.4 Backward Compatibility

For backward compatibility as well as to provide a practical backdoor for hackers, ASDF will
first search for .asd files in the directories specified in asdf:*central-registry* before
it searches in the source registry above.
See Chapter 4 [Configuring ASDF to find your systems — old style], page 6.
By default, asdf:*central-registry* will be empty.

This old mechanism will therefore not affect you if you don’t use it, but will take prece-
dence over the new mechanism if you do use it.
8.5 Configuration DSL

Here is the grammar of the s-expression (SEXP) DSL for source-registry configuration:
;; A configuration is a single SEXP starting with the keyword
;; :source-registry followed by a list of directives.
CONFIGURATION := (:source-registry DIRECTIVE ...)
;; A directive is one of the following:

DIRECTIVE :=
;; INHERITANCE DIRECTIVE:
;; Your configuration expression MUST contain
;; exactly one of the following:
:inherit-configuration |
;; splices inherited configuration (often specified last) or
:ignore-inherited-configuration |
;; drop inherited configuration (specified anywhere)
;; forward compatibility directive (since ASDF 2.011.4), useful when

;; you want to use new configuration features but have to bootstrap
;; the newer required ASDF from an older release that doesn’t
;; support said features:
:ignore-invalid-entries |
;; add a single directory to be scanned (no recursion)

(:directory DIRECTORY-PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR) |
;; add a directory hierarchy, recursing but

;; excluding specified patterns
(:tree DIRECTORY-PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR) |
;; override the defaults for exclusion patterns

(:exclude EXCLUSION-PATTERN ...) |
;; augment the defaults for exclusion patterns
(:also-exclude EXCLUSION-PATTERN ...) |
;; Note that the scope of a an exclude pattern specification is
;; the rest of the current configuration expression or file.
;; splice the parsed contents of another config file

(:include REGULAR-FILE-PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR) |
;; This directive specifies that some default must be spliced.

:default-registry
REGULAR-FILE-PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR
:= PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR ; interpreted as a file
DIRECTORY-PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR
:= PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR ; interpreted as a directory
PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR :=
NIL | ;; Special: skip this entry.
ABSOLUTE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR ;; see pathname DSL
EXCLUSION-PATTERN := a string without wildcards, that will be matched

exactly against the name of a any subdirectory in the directory
component of a path. e.g. "_darcs" will match
#p"/foo/bar/_darcs/src/bar.asd"
Pathnames are designated using another DSL, shared with the output-translations con-
figuration DSL below. The DSL is resolved by the function asdf::resolve-location, to
be documented and exported at some point in the future.
ABSOLUTE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR :=
(ABSOLUTE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR RELATIVE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR ...) |
STRING |
;; namestring (better be absolute or bust, directory assumed where
;; applicable). In output-translations, directory is assumed and
;; **/*.*.* added if it’s last. On MCL, a MacOSX-style POSIX
;; namestring (for MacOS9 style, use #p"..."); Note that none of the
;; above applies to strings used in *central-registry*, which
;; doesn’t use this DSL: they are processed as normal namestrings.
;; however, you can compute what you put in the *central-registry*
;; based on the results of say
;; (asdf::resolve-location "/Users/fare/cl/cl-foo/")
PATHNAME |
;; pathname (better be an absolute path, or bust)
;; In output-translations, unless followed by relative components,
;; it better have appropriate wildcards, as in **/*.*.*
:HOME | ; designates the user-homedir-pathname ~/
:USER-CACHE | ; designates the default location for the user cache
:HERE |
;; designates the location of the configuration file
;; (or *default-pathname-defaults*, if invoked interactively)
:ROOT
;; magic, for output-translations source only: paths that are relative
;; to the root of the source host and device
They keyword :SYSTEM-CACHE is not accepted in ASDF 3.1 and beyond: it

was a security hazard.
RELATIVE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR :=
(RELATIVE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR RELATIVE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR ...) |
STRING |
;; relative directory pathname as interpreted by
;; parse-unix-namestring.
;; In output translations, if last component, **/*.*.* is added
PATHNAME | ; pathname; unless last component, directory is assumed.
:IMPLEMENTATION |
;; directory based on implementation, e.g. sbcl-1.0.45-linux-x64
:IMPLEMENTATION-TYPE |
;; a directory based on lisp-implementation-type only, e.g. sbcl
:DEFAULT-DIRECTORY |
;; a relativized version of the default directory
:*/ | ;; any direct subdirectory (since ASDF 2.011.4)
:**/ | ;; any recursively inferior subdirectory (since ASDF 2.011.4)
:*.*.* | ;; any file (since ASDF 2.011.4)
The keywords :UID and :USERNAME are no longer supported.

For instance, as a simple case, my ~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf,
which is the default place ASDF looks for this configuration, once contained:
(:source-registry
(:tree (:home "cl")) ;; will expand to e.g. "/home/joeluser/cl/"
:inherit-configuration)
8.6 Configuration Directories

Configuration directories consist in files each containing a list of directives without any
enclosing (:source-registry ...) form. The files will be sorted by namestring as if by
string< and the lists of directives of these files with be concatenated in order. An implicit
:inherit-configuration will be included at the end of the list.
System-wide or per-user Common Lisp software distributions such as De-
bian packages or some future version of clbuild may then include files
such as /etc/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/10-foo.conf or
~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/10-foo.conf to easily and
modularly register configuration information about software being distributed.
The convention is that, for sorting purposes, the names of files in such a directory begin
with two digits that determine the order in which these entries will be read. Also, the type
of these files must be .conf, which not only simplifies the implementation by allowing for
more portable techniques in finding those files, but also makes it trivial to disable a file, by
renaming it to a different file type.
Directories may be included by specifying a directory pathname or namestring in an
:include directive, e.g.:
(:include "/foo/bar/")
Hence, to achieve the same effect as my example ~/.config/common-lisp/source-
registry.conf above, I could simply create a file ~/.config/common-lisp/source-
registry.conf.d/33-home-fare-cl.conf alone in its directory with the following
contents:
(:tree "/home/fare/cl/")
8.6.1 The :here directive

The :here directive is an absolute pathname designator that refers to the directory con-
taining the configuration file currently being processed.
The :here directive is intended to simplify the delivery of complex CL systems, and
for easy configuration of projects shared through revision control systems, in accordance
with our design principle that each participant should be able to provide all and only the
information available to him or her.
Consider a person X who has set up the source code repository for a complex project
with a master directory dir/. Ordinarily, one might simply have the user add a directive
that would look something like this:
(:tree "path/to/dir")
But what if X knows that there are very large subtrees under dir that are filled with,
e.g., Java source code, image files for icons, etc.? All of the asdf system definitions are
contained in the subdirectories dir/src/lisp/ and dir/extlib/lisp/, and these are the
only directories that should be searched.
In this case, X can put into dir/ a file asdf.conf that contains the following:
(:source-registry
(:tree (:here "src/lisp/"))
(:tree (:here "extlib/lisp"))
(:directory (:here "outlier/")))
Then when someone else (call her Y) checks out a copy of this repository, she need only
add
(:include "/path/to/my/checkout/directory/asdf.conf")
to one of her previously-existing asdf source location configuration files, or invoke
initialize-source-registry with a configuration form containing that s-expression.
ASDF will find the .conf file that X has provided, and then set up source locations within
the working directory according to X’s (relative) instructions.
8.7 Shell-friendly syntax for configuration

When considering environment variable CL_SOURCE_REGISTRY ASDF will skip to next con-
figuration if it’s an empty string. It will READ the string as a SEXP in the DSL if it begins
with a paren (, otherwise it will be interpreted much like TEXINPUTS, as a list of paths,
where
• paths are separated by a : (colon) on Unix platforms (including cygwin), by a ; (semi-
colon) on other platforms (mainly, Windows).
• each entry is a directory to add to the search path.
• if the entry ends with a double slash // then it instead indicates a tree in the subdi-
rectories of which to recurse.
• if the entry is the empty string (which may only appear once), then it indicates that
the inherited configuration should be spliced there.
8.8 Search Algorithm

In case that isn’t clear, the semantics of the configuration is that when searching for a
system of a given name, directives are processed in order.
When looking in a directory, if the system is found, the search succeeds, otherwise it
continues.
When looking in a tree, if one system is found, the search succeeds. If multiple systems
are found, the consequences are unspecified: the search may succeed with any of the found
systems, or an error may be raised. ASDF 3.2.1 or later returns the pathname whose normal-
ized directory component has the shortest length (as a list), and breaks ties by choosing the
system with the smallest unix-namestring when compared with string<. Earlier versions
of ASDF return ASDF return the first system found, which is implementation-dependent,
and may or may not be the pathname with the smallest unix-namestring when compared
with string<. XCVB raises an error. If none is found, the search continues.
Exclude statements specify patterns of subdirectories the systems from which to ignore.
Typically you don’t want to use copies of files kept by such version control systems as Darcs.
Exclude statements are not propagated to further included or inherited configuration files
or expressions; instead the defaults are reset around every configuration statement to the
default defaults from asdf::*default-source-registry-exclusions*.
Include statements cause the search to recurse with the path specifications from the file
specified.
An inherit-configuration statement cause the search to recurse with the path specifica-
tions from the next configuration (see Section 8.1 [Configurations], page 43, above).
8.9 Caching Results

The implementation is allowed to either eagerly compute the information from the config-
urations and file system, or to lazily re-compute it every time, or to cache any part of it as
it goes. In practice, the recommended source-registry eagerly collects and caches results
and you need to explicitly flush the cache for change to be taken into account, whereas the
old-style *central-registry* mechanism queries the filesystem every time.
To explicitly flush any information cached by the system after a change was made in the
filesystem, See Section 8.10 [Configuration API], page 50, and e.g. call asdf:clear-source-
registry.
Starting with ASDF 3.1.4, you can also explicitly build a persistent cache of the
.asd files found under a tree: when recursing into a directory declared by :tree and its
transitive subdirectories, if a file .cl-source-registry.cache exists containing a form
that is a list starting with :source-registry-cache followed by a list of strings, as in
(:source-registry-cache "foo/bar.asd" "path/to/more.asd" ...), then the strings
are assumed to be unix-namestrings designating the available asd files under that tree,
and the recursion otherwise stops. The list can also be empty, allowing to stop a costly
recursion in a huge directory tree.
To update such a cache after you install, update or remove source repositories, you
can run a script distributed with ASDF: tools/cl-source-registry-cache.lisp
/path/to/directory. To wholly invalidate the cache, you can delete the file .cl-source-
registry.cache in that directory. In either case, for an existing Lisp process to see this
change, it needs to clear its own cache with e.g. (asdf:clear-source-registry).
Developers may safely create a cache in their development tree, and we recommend
they do it at the top of their source tree if it contains more than a small number of files
and directories; they only need update it when they create, remove or move .asd files.
Software distribution managers may also safely create such a cache, but they must be
careful to update it every time they install, update or remove a software source repository
or installation package. Finally, advanced developers who juggle with a lot of code in their
source-registry may manually manage such a cache, to allow for faster startup of Lisp
programs.
This persistence cache can help you reduce startup latency. For instance, on one machine
with hundreds of source repositories, such a cache shaves half a second at the startup of every
#!/usr/bin/cl script using SBCL, more on other implementations; this makes a notable
difference as to their subjective interactivity and usability. The speedup will only happen
if the implementation-provided ASDF is recent enough (3.1.3.7 or later); it is not enough
for a recent ASDF upgrade to be present, since the upgrade will itself be found but after
the old version has scanned the directories without heeding such a cache. To upgrade the
implementation-provided ASDF, see Section 3.4 [Replacing your implementation’s ASDF],
page 4.
8.10 Configuration API

The specified functions are exported from your build system’s package. Thus for ASDF the
corresponding functions are in package ASDF, and for XCVB the corresponding functions
are in package XCVB.
initialize-source-registry &optional PARAMETER [Function]

will read the configuration and initialize all internal variables. You may extend or
override configuration from the environment and configuration files with the given
PARAMETER, which can be nil (no configuration override), or a SEXP (in the
SEXP DSL), a string (as in the string DSL), a pathname (of a file or directory with
configuration), or a symbol (fbound to function that when called returns one of the
above).
clear-source-registry [Function]
undoes any source registry configuration and clears any cache for the search algorithm.
You might want to call this function (or better, clear-configuration) before you
dump an image that would be resumed with a different configuration, and return
an empty configuration. Note that this does not include clearing information about
systems defined in the current image, only about where to look for systems not yet
defined.
ensure-source-registry &optional PARAMETER [Function]

checks whether a source registry has been initialized. If not, initialize it with the
given PARAMETER.
Every time you use ASDF’s find-system, or anything that uses it (such as operate,
load-system, etc.), ensure-source-registry is called with parameter nil, which the first
time around causes your configuration to be read. If you change a configuration file, you
need to explicitly initialize-source-registry again, or maybe simply to clear-source-
registry (or clear-configuration) which will cause the initialization to happen next time
around.
8.11 Introspection
8.11.1 *source-registry-parameter* variable
We have made available the variable *source-registry-parameter* that can be used by
code that wishes to introspect about the (past) configuration of ASDF’s source registry. This
variable should never be set! It will be set as a side-effect of calling initialize-source-
registry; user code should treat it as read-only.
8.11.2 Information about system dependencies

ASDF makes available three functions to read system interdependencies. These are intended
to aid programmers who wish to perform dependency analyses.
system-defsystem-depends-on system [Function]
system-depends-on system [Function]
system-weakly-depends-on system [Function]
Returns a list of names of systems that are weakly depended on by system. Weakly
depended on systems are optionally loaded only if ASDF can find them; failure to
find such systems does not cause an error in loading.
Note that the return value for system-weakly-depends-on is simpler than the return
values of the other two system dependency introspection functions.
8.12 Status
This mechanism is vastly successful, and we have declared that asdf:*central-registry*
is not recommended anymore, though we will continue to support it. All hooks into
implementation-specific search mechanisms have been integrated in the wrapping-source-
registry that everyone uses implicitly.
8.13 Rejected ideas

Alternatives I (FRR) considered and rejected while developing ASDF 2 included:
1. Keep asdf:*central-registry* as the master with its current semantics, and some-
how the configuration parser expands the new configuration language into a expanded
series of directories of subdirectories to lookup, pre-recursing through specified hierar-
chies. This is kludgy, and leaves little space of future cleanups and extensions.
2. Keep asdf:*central-registry* as the master but extend its semantics in completely
new ways, so that new kinds of entries may be implemented as a recursive search, etc.
This seems somewhat backwards.
3. Completely remove asdf:*central-registry* and break backwards compatibility.
Hopefully this will happen in a few years after everyone migrate to a better ASDF
and/or to XCVB, but it would be very bad to do it now.
4. Replace asdf:*central-registry* by a symbol-macro with appropriate magic when

you dereference it or setf it. Only the new variable with new semantics is handled by
the new search procedure. Complex and still introduces subtle semantic issues.
I’ve been suggested the below features, but have rejected them, for the sake of keeping
ASDF no more complex than strictly necessary.
• More syntactic sugar: synonyms for the configuration directives, such as
(:add-directory X) for (:directory X), or (:add-directory-hierarchy X) or
(:add-directory X :recurse t) for (:tree X).
• The possibility to register individual files instead of directories.
• Integrate Xach Beane’s tilde expander into the parser, or something similar that is shell-
friendly or shell-compatible. I’d rather keep ASDF minimal. But maybe this precisely
keeps it minimal by removing the need for evaluated entries that ASDF has? i.e. uses
of USER-HOMEDIR-PATHNAME and $SBCL_HOME Hopefully, these are already superseded
by the :default-registry
• Using the shell-unfriendly syntax /** instead of TEXINPUTS-like // to specify re-
cursion down a filesystem tree in the environment variable. It isn’t that Lisp friendly
either.
8.14 TODO
• Add examples
8.15 Credits for the source-registry

Thanks a lot to Stelian Ionescu for the initial idea.
Thanks to Rommel Martinez for the initial implementation attempt.
All bad design ideas and implementation bugs are mine, not theirs. But so are good
design ideas and elegant implementation tricks.
— Francois-Rene Rideau fare@tunes.org, Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:07:33 -0500
53
9 Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files

Each Common Lisp implementation has its own format for compiled files or fasls.1 If you
use multiple implementations (or multiple versions of the same implementation), you’ll soon
find your source directories littered with various fasls, dfsls, cfsls and so on. Worse yet,
multiple implementations use the same file extension and some implementations maintain
the same file extension while changing formats from version to version (or platform to
platform). This can lead to many errors and much confusion as you switch from one
implementation to the next. Finally, this requires write access to the source directory, and
therefore precludes sharing of a same source code directory between multiple users.
Since ASDF 2, ASDF includes the asdf-output-translations facility to mitigate the
problem.
9.1 Configurations
Configurations specify mappings from input locations to output locations. Once again we
rely on the XDG base directory specification for configuration. See Chapter 8 [XDG base
directory], page 43.
1. Some hardcoded wrapping output translations configuration may be used. This allows
special output translations (or usually, invariant directories) to be specified correspond-
ing to the similar special entries in the source registry.
2. An application may explicitly initialize the output-translations configuration using the
Configuration API in which case this takes precedence. (see Chapter 9 [Configuration
API], page 53.) It may itself compute this configuration from the command-line, from
a script, from its own configuration file, etc.
3. The source registry will be configured from the environment variable ASDF_OUTPUT_
TRANSLATIONS if it exists.
4. The source registry will be configured from user configuration file $XDG_
CONFIG_DIRS/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf (which defaults to
~/.config/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf) if it exists.
5. The source registry will be configured from user configuration directory $XDG_
CONFIG_DIRS/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/ (which defaults to
~/.config/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/) if it exists.
6. The source registry will be configured from system configuration file
/etc/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf if it exists.
7. The source registry will be configured from system configuration directory
/etc/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/ if it exists.
Each of these configurations is specified as a SEXP in a trivial domain-specific lan-
guage (see Section 8.5 [Configuration DSL], page 45). Additionally, a more shell-friendly
syntax is available for the environment variable (see Section 8.7 [Shell-friendly syntax for
configuration], page 48).
When processing an entry in the above list of configuration methods, ASDF will stop
unless that entry explicitly or implicitly specifies that it includes its inherited configuration.
1
“FASL” is short for “FASt Loading.”
Chapter 9: Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files 54
Note that by default, a per-user cache is used for output files. This allows the seamless
use of shared installations of software between several users, and takes files out of the way
of the developers when they browse source code, at the expense of taking a small toll when
developers have to clean up output files and find they need to get familiar with output-
translations first.2
9.2 Backward Compatibility

We purposely do not provide backward compatibility with earlier versions of ASDF-Binary-
Locations (8 Sept 2009), common-lisp-controller (7.0) or cl-launch (2.35), each of
which had similar general capabilities. The APIs of these programs were not designed
for easy user configuration through configuration files. Recent versions of common-lisp-
controller (7.2) and cl-launch (3.000) use the new asdf-output-translations API as
defined below. ASDF-Binary-Locations is fully superseded and not to be used anymore.
This incompatibility shouldn’t inconvenience many people. Indeed, few people use and
customize these packages; these few people are experts who can trivially adapt to the new
configuration. Most people are not experts, could not properly configure these features (ex-
cept inasmuch as the default configuration of common-lisp-controller and/or cl-launch
might have been doing the right thing for some users), and yet will experience software that
“just works”, as configured by the system distributor, or by default.
Nevertheless, if you are a fan of ASDF-Binary-Locations, we provide a limited emulation
mode:
enable-asdf-binary-locations-compatibility &key [Function]

centralize-lisp-binaries default-toplevel-directory
include-per-user-information map-all-source-files
source-to-target-mappings
This function will initialize the new asdf-output-translations facility in a
way that emulates the behaviour of the old ASDF-Binary-Locations facility.
Where you would previously set global variables *centralize-lisp-binaries*,
*default-toplevel-directory*, *include-per-user-information*, *map-all-source-files*
or *source-to-target-mappings* you will now have to pass the same values as
keyword arguments to this function. Note however that as an extension the
:source-to-target-mappings keyword argument will accept any valid pathname
designator for asdf-output-translations instead of just strings and pathnames.
If you insist, you can also keep using the old ASDF-Binary-Locations (the one
available as an extension to load of top of ASDF, not the one built into a few old
versions of ASDF), but first you must disable asdf-output-translations with
(asdf:disable-output-translations), or you might experience “interesting” issues.
Also, note that output translation is enabled by default. To disable it, use
(asdf:disable-output-translations).
2
A CLEAN-OP would be a partial solution to this problem.
9.3 Configuration DSL

Here is the grammar of the SEXP DSL for asdf-output-translations configuration:
;; A configuration is single SEXP starting with keyword :source-registry
;; followed by a list of directives.
CONFIGURATION := (:output-translations DIRECTIVE ...)
;; A directive is one of the following:

DIRECTIVE :=
;; INHERITANCE DIRECTIVE:
;; Your configuration expression MUST contain
;; exactly one of either of these:
:inherit-configuration |
;; splices inherited configuration (often specified last)
:ignore-inherited-configuration |
;; drop inherited configuration (specified anywhere)
;; forward compatibility directive (since ASDF 2.011.4), useful when

;; you want to use new configuration features but have to bootstrap a
;; the newer required ASDF from an older release that doesn’t have
;; said features:
:ignore-invalid-entries |
;; include a configuration file or directory

(:include PATHNAME-DESIGNATOR) |
;; enable global cache in ~/.common-lisp/cache/sbcl-1.0.45-linux-amd64/

;; or something.
:enable-user-cache |
;; Disable global cache. Map / to /
:disable-cache |
;; add a single directory to be scanned (no recursion)

(DIRECTORY-DESIGNATOR DIRECTORY-DESIGNATOR)
;; use a function to return the translation of a directory designator

(DIRECTORY-DESIGNATOR (:function TRANSLATION-FUNCTION))
DIRECTORY-DESIGNATOR :=
NIL | ; As source: skip this entry. As destination: same as source
T | ; as source matches anything, as destination
; maps pathname to itself.
ABSOLUTE-COMPONENT-DESIGNATOR ; same as in the source-registry language
TRANSLATION-FUNCTION :=
SYMBOL | ;; symbol naming a function that takes two arguments:
;; the pathname to be translated and the matching
;; DIRECTORY-DESIGNATOR
LAMBDA ;; A form which evaluates to a function taking two arguments:
;; the pathname to be translated and the matching
;; DIRECTORY-DESIGNATOR
Relative components better be either relative or subdirectories of the path before them,
or bust.
The last component, if not a pathname, is notionally completed by /**/*.*. You can
specify more fine-grained patterns by using a pathname object as the last component e.g.
#p"some/path/**/foo*/bar-*.fasl"
You may use #+features to customize the configuration file.
The second designator of a mapping may be nil, indicating that files are not mapped
to anything but themselves (same as if the second designator was the same as the first).
When the first designator is t, the mapping always matches. When the first designator
starts with :root, the mapping matches any host and device. In either of these cases, if the
second designator isn’t t and doesn’t start with :root, then strings indicating the host and
pathname are somehow copied in the beginning of the directory component of the source
pathname before it is translated.
When the second designator is t, the mapping is the identity. When the second designa-
tor starts with :root, the mapping preserves the host and device of the original pathname.
Notably, this allows you to map files to a subdirectory of the whichever directory the
file is in. Though the syntax is not quite as easy to use as we’d like, you can have an
(source destination) mapping entry such as follows in your configuration file, or you may
use enable-asdf-binary-locations-compatibility with :centralize-lisp-binaries
nil which will do the same thing internally for you:
#.(let ((wild-subdir
(make-pathname :directory ’(:relative :wild-inferiors)))
(wild-file
(make-pathname :name :wild :version :wild :type :wild)))
‘((:root ,wild-subdir ,wild-file)
(:root ,wild-subdir :implementation ,wild-file)))
Starting with ASDF 2.011.4, you can use the simpler: ‘(:root (:root :**/
:implementation :*.*.*))
:include statements cause the search to recurse with the path specifications from the
file specified.
If the translate-pathname mechanism cannot achieve a desired translation, the user
may provide a function which provides the required algorithm. Such a translation function
is specified by supplying a list as the second directory-designator the first element of
which is the keyword :function, and the second element of which is either a symbol which
designates a function or a lambda expression. The function designated by the second
argument must take two arguments, the first being the pathname of the source file, the
second being the wildcard that was matched. When invoked, the function should return
the translated pathname.
An :inherit-configuration statement causes the search to recurse with the path spec-
ifications from the next configuration in the bulleted list. See Chapter 9 [Configurations],
page 53, above.
• :enable-user-cache is the same as (t :user-cache).
• :disable-cache is the same as (t t).
• :user-cache uses the contents of variable asdf::*user-cache* which by default is
the same as using (:home ".cache" "common-lisp" :implementation).
9.4 Configuration Directories

Configuration directories consist of files, each of which contains a list of directives without
any enclosing (:output-translations ...) form. The files will be sorted by namestring
as if by string< and the lists of directives of these files with be concatenated in order. An
implicit :inherit-configuration will be included at the end of the list.
System-wide or per-user Common Lisp software distributions such as Debian packages
or some future version of clbuild may then include files such as /etc/common-lisp/asdf-
output-translations.conf.d/10-foo.conf or ~/.config/common-lisp/asdf-output-
translations.conf.d/10-foo.conf to easily and modularly register configuration infor-
mation about software being distributed.
The convention is that, for sorting purposes, the names of files in such a directory begin
with two digits that determine the order in which these entries will be read. Also, the type
of these files must be .conf, which not only simplifies the implementation by allowing for
more portable techniques in finding those files, but also makes it trivial to disable a file, by
renaming it to a different file type.
Directories may be included by specifying a directory pathname or namestring in an
:include directive, e.g.:
(:include "/foo/bar/")
9.5 Shell-friendly syntax for configuration

When processing the environment variable ASDF_OUTPUT_TRANSLATIONS:
• ASDF will skip to the next configuration if it’s an empty string.
• ASDF will READ the string as an SEXP in the DSL, if it begins with a parenthesis (.
• Otherwise ASDF will interpret the value as a list of directories (see below).
In the directory list format, directories should come in pairs, each pair indicating a
mapping directive. Entries are separated by a : (colon) on Unix platforms (including Mac
and cygwin), and by a ; (semicolon) on other platforms (mainly, Windows).
The magic empty entry, if it comes in what would otherwise be the first entry in a pair,
indicates the splicing of inherited configuration; the next entry (if any) then starts a new
pair. If the second entry in a pair is empty, it indicates that the directory in the first entry
is to be left untranslated (which has the same effect as if the directory had been repeated).
For example, "/foo:/bar::/baz:" means: specify that outputs for things under direc-
tory /foo/ are translated to be under /bar/; then include the inherited configuration; then
specify that outputs for things under directory /baz/ are not translated.
9.6 Semantics of Output Translations

From the specified configuration, a list of mappings is extracted in a straightforward way:
mappings are collected in order, recursing through included or inherited configuration as
specified. To this list is prepended some implementation-specific mappings, and is appended
a global default.
The list is then compiled to a mapping table as follows: for each entry, in order, resolve
the first designated directory into an actual directory pathname for source locations. If
no mapping was specified yet for that location, resolve the second designated directory to
an output location directory add a mapping to the table mapping the source location to
the output location, and add another mapping from the output location to itself (unless a
mapping already exists for the output location).
Based on the table, a mapping function is defined, mapping source pathnames to output
pathnames: given a source pathname, locate the longest matching prefix in the source
column of the mapping table. Replace that prefix by the corresponding output column in
the same row of the table, and return the result. If no match is found, return the source
pathname. (A global default mapping the filesystem root to itself may ensure that there
will always be a match, with same fall-through semantics).
9.7 Caching Results

The implementation is allowed to either eagerly compute the information from the config-
urations and file system, or to lazily re-compute it every time, or to cache any part of it as
it goes. To explicitly flush any information cached by the system, use the API below.
9.8 Output location API

The specified functions are exported from package ASDF.
initialize-output-translations &optional PARAMETER [Function]

will read the configuration and initialize all internal variables. You may extend or
override configuration from the environment and configuration files with the given
PARAMETER, which can be nil (no configuration override), or a SEXP (in the
SEXP DSL), a string (as in the string DSL), a pathname (of a file or directory with
configuration), or a symbol (fbound to function that when called returns one of the
above).
disable-output-translations [Function]
will initialize output translations in a way that maps every pathname to itself, effec-
tively disabling the output translation facility.
clear-output-translations [Function]
undoes any output translation configuration and clears any cache for the mapping
algorithm. You might want to call this function (or better, clear-configuration)
before you dump an image that would be resumed with a different configuration, and
return an empty configuration. Note that this does not include clearing information
about systems defined in the current image, only about where to look for systems not
yet defined.
ensure-output-translations &optional PARAMETER [Function]

checks whether output translations have been initialized. If not, initialize them with
the given PARAMETER. This function will be called before any attempt to operate
on a system.
apply-output-translations PATHNAME [Function]

Applies the configured output location translations to PATHNAME (calls
ensure-output-translations for the translations).
Every time you use ASDF’s output-files, or anything that uses it (that may compile,
such as operate, perform, etc.), ensure-output-translations is called with parameter
nil, which the first time around causes your configuration to be read. If you change a con-
figuration file, you need to explicitly initialize-output-translations again, or maybe
clear-output-translations (or clear-configuration), which will cause the initializa-
tion to happen next time around.
9.9 Credits for output translations

Thanks a lot to Peter van Eynde for Common Lisp Controller and to Bjorn Lindberg and
Gary King for ASDF-Binary-Locations.
All bad design ideas and implementation bugs are to mine, not theirs. But so are good
design ideas and elegant implementation tricks.
— Francois-Rene Rideau fare@tunes.org
60
10 Error handling
10.1 ASDF errors

If ASDF detects an incorrect system definition, it will signal a generalised instance of
system-definition-error.
Operations may go wrong (for example when source files contain errors). These are
signalled using generalised instances of operation-error.
10.2 Compilation error and warning handling

ASDF checks for warnings and errors when a file is compiled. The variables *compile-file-
warnings-behaviour* and *compile-file-failure-behaviour* control the handling of any such
events. The valid values for these variables are :error, :warn, and :ignore.
61
11 Miscellaneous additional functionality
ASDF includes several additional features that are generally useful for system definition
and development.
11.1 Controlling file compilation

When declaring a component (system, module, file), you can specify a keyword argument
:around-compile function. If left unspecified (and therefore unbound), the value will be
inherited from the parent component if any, or with a default of nil if no value is specified
in any transitive parent.
The argument must be either nil, an fbound symbol, a lambda-expression (e.g. (lambda
(thunk) ...(funcall thunk ...) ...)) a function object (e.g. using #.#’ but that’s dis-
couraged because it prevents the introspection done by e.g. asdf-dependency-grovel), or
a string that when read yields a symbol or a lambda-expression. nil means the normal
compile-file function will be called. A non-nil value designates a function of one argument
that will be called with a function that will invoke compile-file* with various arguments;
the around-compile hook may supply additional keyword arguments to pass to that call to
compile-file*.
One notable argument that is heeded by compile-file* is :compile-check, a func-
tion called when the compilation was otherwise a success, with the same arguments as
compile-file; the function shall return true if the compilation and its resulting compiled
file respected all system-specific invariants, and false (nil) if it broke any of those invari-
ants; it may issue warnings or errors before it returns nil. (NB: The ability to pass such
extra flags is only available starting with ASDF 2.22.3.) This feature is notably exercised
by asdf-finalizers.
By using a string, you may reference a function, symbol and/or package that will only
be created later during the build, but isn’t yet present at the time the defsystem form is
evaluated. However, if your entire system is using such a hook, you may have to explicitly
override the hook with nil for all the modules and files that are compiled before the hook
is defined.
Using this hook, you may achieve such effects as: locally renaming packages, binding
*readtables* and other syntax-controlling variables, handling warnings and other condi-
tions, proclaiming consistent optimization settings, saving code coverage information, main-
taining meta-data about compilation timings, setting gensym counters and PRNG seeds
and other sources of non-determinism, overriding the source-location and/or timestamping
systems, checking that some compile-time side-effects were properly balanced, etc.
Note that there is no around-load hook. This is on purpose. Some implementations
such as ECL, GCL or MKCL link object files, which allows for no such hook. Other
implementations allow for concatenating FASL files, which doesn’t allow for such a hook
either. We aim to discourage something that’s not portable, and has some dubious impact
on performance and semantics even when it is possible. Things you might want to do with
an around-load hook are better done around-compile, though it may at times require some
creativity (see e.g. the package-renaming system).
Chapter 11: Miscellaneous additional functionality 62
11.2 Controlling source file character encoding

Starting with ASDF 2.21, components accept a :encoding option so authors may specify
which character encoding should be used to read and evaluate their source code. When
left unspecified, the encoding is inherited from the parent module or system; if no encoding
is specified at any point, or if nil is explicitly specified, an extensible protocol described
below is followed, that ultimately defaults to :utf-8 since ASDF 3.
The protocol to determine the encoding is to call the function detect-encoding, which
itself, if provided a valid file, calls the function specified by *encoding-detection-hook*,
or else defaults to the *default-encoding*. The *encoding-detection-hook* is by default
bound to function always-default-encoding, that always returns the contents of *default-
encoding*. *default-encoding* is bound to :utf-8 by default (before ASDF 3, the default
was :default).
Whichever encoding is returned must be a portable keyword, that will be translated
to an implementation-specific external-format designator by function encoding-external-
format, which itself simply calls the function specified *encoding-external-format-hook*;
that function by default is default-encoding-external-format, that only recognizes
:utf-8 and :default, and translates the former to the implementation-dependent *utf-8-
external-format*, and the latter to itself (that itself is portable but has an implementation-
dependent meaning).
In other words, there now are plenty of extension hooks, but by default ASDF enforces
the previous de facto standard behaviour of using :utf-8, independently from whatever
configuration the user may be using. Thus, system authors can now rely on :utf-8 being
used while compiling their files, even if the user is currently using :koi8-r or :euc-jp as
their interactive encoding. (Before ASDF 3, there was no such guarantee, :default was
used, and only plain ASCII was safe to include in source code.)
Some legacy implementations only support 8-bit characters, and some implementations
provide 8-bit only variants. On these implementations, the *utf-8-external-format* grace-
fully falls back to :default, and Unicode characters will be read as multi-character mo-
jibake. To detect such situations, UIOP will push the :asdf-unicode feature on imple-
mentations that support Unicode, and you can use reader-conditionalization to protect any
:encoding encoding statement, as in #+asdf-unicode :encoding #+asdf-unicode :utf-
8. We recommend that you avoid using unprotected :encoding specifications until after
ASDF 2.21 or later becomes widespread. As of May 2016, all maintained implementations
provide ASDF 3.1, so you may prudently start using this and other features without such
protection.
While it offers plenty of hooks for extension, and one such extension is available (see
asdf-encodings below), ASDF itself only recognizes one encoding beside :default, and
that is :utf-8, which is the de facto standard, already used by the vast majority of libraries
that use more than ASCII. On implementations that do not support unicode, the feature
:asdf-unicode is absent, and the :default external-format is used to read even source
files declared as :utf-8. On these implementations, non-ASCII characters intended to be
read as one CL character may thus end up being read as multiple CL characters. In most
cases, this shouldn’t affect the software’s semantics: comments will be skipped just the
same, strings with be read and printed with slightly different lengths, symbol names will be
accordingly longer, but none of it should matter. But a few systems that actually depend
on unicode characters may fail to work properly, or may work in a subtly different way. See
for instance lambda-reader.
We invite you to embrace UTF-8 as the encoding for non-ASCII characters starting
today, even without any explicit specification in your .asd files. Indeed, on some imple-
mentations and configurations, UTF-8 is already the :default, and loading your code
may cause errors if it is encoded in anything but UTF-8. Therefore, even with the legacy
behaviour, non-UTF-8 is guaranteed to break for some users, whereas UTF-8 is pretty
much guaranteed not to break anywhere (provided you do not use a BOM), although it
might be read incorrectly on some implementations. :utf-8 has been the default value of
*default-encoding* since ASDF 3.
If you need non-standard character encodings for your source code, use the extension
system asdf-encodings, by specifying :defsystem-depends-on ("asdf-encodings") in
your defsystem. This extension system will register support for more encodings using
the *encoding-external-format-hook* facility, so you can explicitly specify :encoding
:latin1 in your .asd file. Using the *encoding-detection-hook* it will also eventually
implement some autodetection of a file’s encoding from an emacs-style -*- mode: lisp ;
coding: latin1 -*- declaration, or otherwise based on an analysis of octet patterns in
the file. At this point, asdf-encoding only supports the encodings that are supported as
part of your implementation. Since the list varies depending on implementations, we still
recommend you use :utf-8 everywhere, which is the most portable (next to it is :latin1).
Recent versions of Quicklisp include asdf-encodings; if you’re not using it, you may
get this extension using git: git clone https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/asdf/asdf-
encodings.git or git clone git@gitlab.common-lisp.net:asdf/asdf-encodings.git.
You can also browse the repository on https: / / gitlab . common-lisp . net / asdf /
asdf-encodings.
When you use asdf-encodings, any .asd file loaded will use the autodetection algorithm
to determine its encoding. If you depend on this detection happening, you should explicitly
load asdf-encodings early in your build. Note that :defsystem-depends-on cannot be
used here: by the time the :defsystem-depends-on is loaded, the enclosing defsystem
form has already been read.
In practice, this means that the *default-encoding* is usually used for .asd files.
Currently, this defaults to :utf-8, and you should be safe using Unicode characters in those
files. This might matter, for instance, in meta-data about author’s names. Otherwise, the
main data in these files is component (path)names, and we don’t recommend using non-
ASCII characters for these, for the result probably isn’t very portable.
11.3 Miscellaneous Functions

These functions are exported by ASDF for your convenience.
system-relative-pathname system name &key type [Function]
It’s often handy to locate a file relative to some system. The system-relative-
pathname function meets this need.
It takes two mandatory arguments system and name and a keyword argument type:
system is name of a system, whereas name and optionally type specify a relative
pathname, interpreted like a component pathname specifier by coerce-pathname.
See [Pathname specifiers], page 20.
It returns a pathname built from the location of the system’s source directory and
the relative pathname. For example:
> (asdf:system-relative-pathname ’cl-ppcre "regex.data")
#P"/repository/other/cl-ppcre/regex.data"
system-source-directory system-designator [Function]

ASDF does not provide a turnkey solution for locating data (or other miscellaneous)
files that are distributed together with the source code of a system. Programmers can
use system-source-directory to find such files. Returns a pathname object. The
system-designator may be a string, symbol, or ASDF system object.
clear-system system-designator [Function]

It is sometimes useful to force recompilation of a previously loaded system. For these
cases, (asdf:clear-system :foo) will remove the system from the table of currently
loaded systems: the next time the system foo or one that depends on it is re-loaded,
foo will be loaded again.1
Note that this does not and cannot undo the previous loading of the system. Common
Lisp has no provision for such an operation, and its reliance on irreversible side-effects
to global data structures makes such a thing impossible in the general case. If the
software being re-loaded is not conceived with hot upgrade in mind, re-loading may
cause many errors, warnings or subtle silent problems, as packages, generic function
signatures, structures, types, macros, constants, etc. are being redefined incompati-
bly. It is up to the user to make sure that reloading is possible and has the desired
effect. In some cases, extreme measures such as recursively deleting packages, un-
registering symbols, defining methods on update-instance-for-redefined-class
and much more are necessary for reloading to happen smoothly. ASDF itself goes
to extensive effort to make a hot upgrade possible with respect to its own code.
If you want, you can reuse some of its utilities such as uiop:define-package and
uiop:with-upgradability, and get inspiration (or disinspiration) from what it does
in header.lisp and upgrade.lisp.
register-preloaded-system name &rest keys &key version [Function]

&allow-other-keys
A system with name name, created by make-instance with extra keys keys (e.g.
:version), is registered as preloaded. If version is t (default), then the version is
copied from the defined system of the same name (if registered) or else is nil (this
automatic copy of version is only available starting since ASDF 3.1.8).
A preloaded system is considered as having already been loaded into the current
image, and if at some point some other system :depends-on it yet no source
code is found, it is considered as already provided, and ASDF will not raise a
missing-component error.
This function is particularly useful if you distribute your code as fasls with either
compile-bundle-op or monolithic-compile-bundle-op, and want to register sys-
tems so that dependencies will work uniformly whether you’re using your software
from source or from fasl.
1
Alternatively, you could touch foo.asd or remove the corresponding fasls from the output file cache.
Note that if the system was already defined or loaded from source code, its build
information will remain active until you call clear-system on it, at which point a
system without build information will be registered in its place.
register-immutable-system name &rest keys [Function]

A system with name name is registered as preloaded, and additionally is marked as
immutable: that is, attempts to compile or load it will be succeed without actually
reading, creating or loading any file, as if the system was passed as a force-not
argument to all calls to plan or operate. There will be no search for an updated
.asd file to override the loaded version, whether from the source-register or any other
method.
If a version keyword argument is specified as t or left unspecified, then the version is
copied from the defined system of the same name (if registered) or else is nil. This
automatic copy of version is available starting since immutable systems have been
available in ASDF 3.1.5.
This function, available since ASDF 3.1.5, is particularly useful if you distribute a
large body of code as a precompiled image, and want to allow users to extend the
image with further extension systems, but without making thousands of filesystem
requests looking for inexistent (or worse, out of date) source code for all the systems
that came bundled with the image but aren’t distributed as source code to regular
users.
run-shell-command control-string &rest args [Function]

This function is obsolete and present only for the sake of backwards-compatibility:
“If it’s not backwards, it’s not compatible”. We strongly discourage its use. Its
current behaviour is only well-defined on Unix platforms (which include MacOS X
and cygwin). On Windows, anything goes. The following documentation is only for
the purpose of your migrating away from it in a way that preserves semantics.
Instead we recommend the use run-program, described in the next section, and avail-
able as part of ASDF since ASDF 3.
run-shell-command takes as arguments a format control-string and arguments
to be passed to format after this control-string to produce a string. This string is
a command that will be evaluated with a POSIX shell if possible; yet, on Windows,
some implementations will use CMD.EXE, while others (like SBCL) will make an
attempt at invoking a POSIX shell (and fail if it is not present).
11.4 Some Utility Functions

The below functions are not exported by ASDF itself, but by UIOP, available since ASDF 3.
Some of them have precursors in ASDF 2, but we recommend that for active developments,
you should rely on the package UIOP as included in ASDF 3. UIOP provides many, many
more utility functions, and we recommend you read its README.md and sources for more
information.
parse-unix-namestring name &key type defaults dot-dot [Function]

ensure-directory &allow-other-keys
Coerce name into a pathname using standard Unix syntax.
Unix syntax is used whether or not the underlying system is Unix; on non-Unix
systems it is only usable for relative pathnames. In order to manipulate relative
pathnames portably, it is crucial to possess a portable pathname syntax independent
of the underlying OS. This is what parse-unix-namestring provides, and why we
use it in ASDF.
When given a pathname object, just return it untouched. When given nil, just return
nil. When given a non-null symbol, first downcase its name and treat it as a string.
When given a string, portably decompose it into a pathname as below.
#\/ separates directory components.
The last #\/-separated substring is interpreted as follows: 1- If type is :directory
or ensure-directory is true, the string is made the last directory component, and its
name and type are nil. if the string is empty, it’s the empty pathname with all slots
nil. 2- If type is nil, the substring is a file-namestring, and its name and type are
separated by split-name-type. 3- If type is a string, it is the given type, and the
whole string is the name.
Directory components with an empty name the name . are removed. Any directory
named .. is read as dot-dot, which must be one of :back or :up and defaults to
:back.
host, device and version components are taken from defaults, which itself defaults
to *nil-pathname*. *nil-pathname* is also used if defaults is nil. No host or device
can be specified in the string itself, which makes it unsuitable for absolute pathnames
outside Unix.
For relative pathnames, these components (and hence the defaults) won’t matter if
you use merge-pathnames* but will matter if you use merge-pathnames, which is an
important reason to always use merge-pathnames*.
Arbitrary keys are accepted, and the parse result is passed to ensure-pathname
with those keys, removing type, defaults and dot-dot. When you’re manipulating
pathnames that are supposed to make sense portably even though the OS may not be
Unixish, we recommend you use :want-relative t so that parse-unix-namestring
will throw an error if the pathname is absolute.
merge-pathnames* specified &optional defaults [Function]
This function is a replacement for merge-pathnames that uses the host and device
from the defaults rather than the specified pathname when the latter is a relative
pathname. This allows ASDF and its users to create and use relative pathnames
without having to know beforehand what are the host and device of the absolute
pathnames they are relative to.
subpathname pathname subpath &key type [Function]
This function takes a pathname and a subpath and a type. If subpath is already a
pathname object (not namestring), and is an absolute pathname at that, it is returned
unchanged; otherwise, subpath is turned into a relative pathname with given type as
per parse-unix-namestring with :want-relative t :type type, then it is merged
with the pathname-directory-pathname of pathname, as per merge-pathnames*.
We strongly encourage the use of this function for portably resolving relative path-
names in your code base.
subpathname* pathname subpath &key type [Function]

This function returns nil if the base pathname is nil, otherwise acts like
subpathname.
run-program command &key ignore-error-status force-shell input [Function]
output error-output if-input-does-not-exist if-output-exists
if-error-output-exists element-type external-format &allow-other-keys
run-program takes a command argument that is either a list of a program name or
path and its arguments, or a string to be executed by a shell. It spawns the command,
waits for it to return, verifies that it exited cleanly (unless told not too below), and
optionally captures and processes its output. It accepts many keyword arguments to
configure its behaviour.
run-program returns three values: the first for the output, the second for the error-
output, and the third for the return value. (Beware that before ASDF 3.0.2.11, it
didn’t handle input or error-output, and returned only one value, the one for the
output if any handler was specified, or else the exit code; please upgrade ASDF, or
at least UIOP, to rely on the new enhanced behaviour.)
output is its most important argument; it specifies how the output is captured and
processed. If it is nil, then the output is redirected to the null device, that will discard
it. If it is :interactive, then it is inherited from the current process (beware: this
may be different from your *standard-output*, and under SLIME will be on your
*inferior-lisp* buffer). If it is t, output goes to your current *standard-output*
stream. Otherwise, output should be a value that is a suitable first argument to
slurp-input-stream (see below), or a list of such a value and keyword arguments.
In this case, run-program will create a temporary stream for the program output; the
program output, in that stream, will be processed by a call to slurp-input-stream,
using output as the first argument (or if it’s a list the first element of output and
the rest as keywords). The primary value resulting from that call (or nil if no call
was needed) will be the first value returned by run-program. E.g., using :output
:string will have it return the entire output stream as a string. And using :output
’(:string :stripped t) will have it return the same string stripped of any ending
newline.
error-output is similar to output, except that the resulting value is returned as the
second value of run-program. t designates the *error-output*. Also :output means
redirecting the error output to the output stream, in which case nil is returned.
input is similar to output, except that vomit-output-stream is used, no value is
returned, and t designates the *standard-input*.
element-type and external-format are passed on to your Lisp implementation,
when applicable, for creation of the output stream.
One and only one of the stream slurping or vomiting may or may not happen in
parallel in parallel with the subprocess, depending on options and implementation,
and with priority being given to output processing. Other streams are completely
produced or consumed before or after the subprocess is spawned, using temporary
files.
force-shell forces evaluation of the command through a shell, even if it was passed
as a list rather than a string. If a shell is used, it is /bin/sh on Unix or CMD.EXE on
68
Windows, except on implementations that (erroneously, IMNSHO) insist on consult-

ing $SHELL like clisp.
ignore-error-status causes run-program to not raise an error if the spawned pro-
gram exits in error. Following POSIX convention, an error is anything but a normal
exit with status code zero. By default, an error of type subprocess-error is raised
in this case.
run-program works on all platforms supported by ASDF, except Genera. See the
source code for more documentation.
slurp-input-stream processor input-stream &key [Function]

slurp-input-stream is a generic function of two arguments, a target object and an
input stream, and accepting keyword arguments. Predefined methods based on the
target object are as follows:
• If the object is a function, the function is called with the stream as argument.
• If the object is a cons, its first element is applied to its rest appended by a list
of the input stream.
• If the object is an output stream, the contents of the input stream are copied to
it. If the linewise keyword argument is provided, copying happens line by line,
and an optional prefix is printed before each line. Otherwise, copying happen
based on a buffer of size buffer-size, using the specified element-type.
• If the object is ’string or :string, the content is captured into a string. Ac-
cepted keywords include the element-type and a flag stripped, which when true
causes any single line ending to be removed as per uiop:stripln.
• If the object is :lines, the content is captured as a list of strings, one per line,
without line ending. If the count keyword argument is provided, it is a maximum
count of lines to be read.
• If the object is :line, the content is captured as with :lines above, and then its
sub-object is extracted with the at argument, which defaults to 0, extracting the
first line. A number will extract the corresponding line. See the documentation
for uiop:access-at.
• If the object is :forms, the content is captured as a list of s-expressions, as read
by the Lisp reader. If the count argument is provided, it is a maximum count
of lines to be read. We recommend you control the syntax with such macro as
uiop:with-safe-io-syntax.
• If the object is :form, the content is captured as with :forms above, and then its
sub-object is extracted with the at argument, which defaults to 0, extracting the
first form. A number will extract the corresponding form. See the documentation
for uiop:access-at. We recommend you control the syntax with such macro as
uiop:with-safe-io-syntax.
69
12 Getting the latest version

Decide which version you want. The master branch is where development happens; its HEAD
is usually OK, including the latest fixes and portability tweaks, but an occasional regression
may happen despite our (limited) test suite.
The release branch is what cautious people should be using; it has usually been tested
more, and releases are cut at a point where there isn’t any known unresolved issue.
You may get the ASDF source repository using git: git clone https://gitlab.common-
lisp.net/asdf/asdf.git
You will find the above referenced tags in this repository. You can also browse the
repository on https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/asdf/asdf.
Discussion of ASDF development is conducted on the mailing list (see Section 13.2
[Mailing list], page 70).
70
13 FAQ
13.1 “Where do I report a bug?”

ASDF bugs are tracked on launchpad: https://launchpad.net/asdf.
If you’re unsure about whether something is a bug, or for general discussion, use the
asdf-devel mailing list (see Section 13.2 [Mailing list], page 70).
13.2 Mailing list

Discussion of ASDF development is conducted on the mailing list asdf-devel@common-
lisp.net. http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asdf-devel
13.3 “What has changed between ASDF 1, ASDF 2, and

ASDF 3?”
We released ASDF 2.000 on May 31st 2010, ASDF 3.0.0 on May 15th 2013, ASDF 3.1.2
on May 6th 2014. Releases of ASDF 2 and now ASDF 3 have since then been included
in all actively maintained CL implementations that used to bundle ASDF 1, plus many
implementations that previously did not. ASDF has been made to work with all actively
maintained CL implementations and even a few implementations that are not actively
maintained.
Furthermore, it is possible to upgrade from ASDF 1 to ASDF 2 or ASDF 3 on the
fly (though we recommend instead upgrading your implementation or replacing its ASDF
module). For this reason, we have stopped supporting ASDF 1 and ASDF 2. If you are using
ASDF 1 or ASDF 2 and are experiencing any kind of issues or limitations, we recommend
you upgrade to ASDF 3 — and we explain how to do that. See Chapter 3 [Loading ASDF],
page 3.
Note that in the context of compatibility requirements, ASDF 2.27, released on Feb
1st 2013, and further releases up to 2.33, count as pre-releases of ASDF 3, and define the
:asdf3 feature, though the first stable release of ASDF 3 was release 3.0.1. Significant
new or improved functionality were added in ASDF 3.1; the :asdf3.1 feature is present in
recent enough versions to detect this functionality; the first stable release since then was
ASDF 3.1.2. New *features* are only added at major milestones, and the next one will
probably be :asdf3.2.
13.3.1 What are ASDF 1, ASDF 2, and ASDF 3?

ASDF 1 refers to any release earlier than 1.369 or so (from August 2001 to October 2009),
and to any development revision earlier than 2.000 (May 2010). If your copy of ASDF
doesn’t even contain version information, it’s an old ASDF 1. Revisions between 1.656 and
1.728 may count as development releases for ASDF 2.
ASDF 2 refers to releases from 2.000 (May 31st 2010) to 2.26 (Oct 30th 2012), and any
development revision newer than ASDF 1 and older than 2.27 (Feb 1st 2013).
ASDF 3 refers to releases from 2.27 (Feb 1st 2013) to 2.33 and 3.0.0 onward (May 15th
2013). 2.27 to 2.33 count as pre-releases to ASDF 3.
Chapter 13: FAQ 71
ASDF 3.1 refers to releases from 3.1.2 (May 6th 2014) onward. These releases are also
considered part of ASDF 3.
13.3.2 How do I detect the ASDF version?

All releases of ASDF push :asdf onto *features*. Releases starting with ASDF 2 push
:asdf2 onto *features*. Releases starting with ASDF 3 (including 2.27 and later pre-
releases) push :asdf3 onto *features*. Furthermore, releases starting with ASDF 3.1.2
(May 2014), though they count as ASDF 3, include enough progress that they also push
:asdf3.1 onto *features*. You may depend on the presence or absence of these features
to write code that takes advantage of recent ASDF functionality but still works on older
versions, or at least detects the old version and signals an error.
Additionally, all releases starting with ASDF 2 define a function (asdf:asdf-version)
you may use to query the version. All releases starting with 2.013 display the version
number prominently on the second line of the asdf.lisp source file.
If you are experiencing problems or limitations of any sort with ASDF 1 or ASDF 2, we
recommend that you should upgrade to the latest release, be it ASDF 3 or other.
Finally, here is a code snippet to programmatically determine what version of ASDF is
loaded, if any, that works on all versions including very old ones:
(when (find-package :asdf)
(let ((ver (symbol-value
(or (find-symbol (string :*asdf-version*) :asdf)
(find-symbol (string :*asdf-revision*) :asdf)))))
(etypecase ver
(string ver)
(cons (with-output-to-string (s)
(loop for (n . m) on ver
do (princ n s)
(when m (princ "." s)))))
(null "1.0"))))
If it returns nil then ASDF is not installed. Otherwise it should return a string. If it
returns "1.0", then it can actually be any version before 1.77 or so, or some buggy variant
of 1.x. If it returns anything older than "3.0.1", you really need to upgrade your imple-
mentation or at least upgrade its ASDF. See Section 3.4 [Replacing your implementation’s
ASDF], page 4.
13.3.3 ASDF can portably name files in subdirectories

Common Lisp namestrings are not portable, except maybe for logical pathname
namestrings, that themselves have various limitations and require a lot of setup that is
itself ultimately non-portable.
In ASDF 1, the only portable ways to refer to pathnames inside systems and components
were very awkward, using #.(make-pathname ...) and #.(merge-pathnames ...). Even
the above were themselves were inadequate in the general case due to host and device issues,
unless horribly complex patterns were used. Plenty of simple cases that looked portable
actually weren’t, leading to much confusion and greavance.
Chapter 13: FAQ 72
ASDF 2 implements its own portable syntax for strings as pathname specifiers. Naming
files within a system definition becomes easy and portable again. See Chapter 11 [Miscel-
laneous additional functionality], page 61, merge-pathnames*, coerce-pathname.
On the other hand, there are places where systems used to accept namestrings
where you must now use an explicit pathname object: (defsystem ... :pathname
"LOGICAL-HOST:PATH;TO;SYSTEM;" ...) must now be written with the #p syntax:
(defsystem ... :pathname #p"LOGICAL-HOST:PATH;TO;SYSTEM;" ...)
See [Pathname specifiers], page 20.
13.3.4 Output translations

A popular feature added to ASDF was output pathname translation: asdf-binary-
locations, common-lisp-controller, cl-launch and other hacks were all implementing
it in ways both mutually incompatible and difficult to configure.
Output pathname translation is essential to share source directories of portable sys-
tems across multiple implementations or variants thereof, or source directories of shared
installations of systems across multiple users, or combinations of the above.
In ASDF 2, a standard mechanism is provided for that, asdf-output-translations,
with sensible defaults, adequate configuration languages, a coherent set of configuration
files and hooks, and support for non-Unix platforms.
See Chapter 9 [Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files], page 53.
13.3.5 Source Registry Configuration

Configuring ASDF used to require special magic to be applied just at the right moment,
between the moment ASDF is loaded and the moment it is used, in a way that is specific
to the user, the implementation he is using and the application he is building.
This made for awkward configuration files and startup scripts that could not be shared
between users, managed by administrators or packaged by distributions.
ASDF 2 provides a well-documented way to configure ASDF, with sensible defaults,
adequate configuration languages, and a coherent set of configuration files and hooks.
We believe it’s a vast improvement because it decouples application distribution from
library distribution. The application writer can avoid thinking where the libraries are, and
the library distributor (dpkg, clbuild, advanced user, etc.) can configure them once and for
every application. Yet settings can be easily overridden where needed, so whoever needs
control has exactly as much as required.
At the same time, ASDF 2 remains compatible with the old magic you may have in your
build scripts (using *central-registry* and *system-definition-search-functions*)
to tailor the ASDF configuration to your build automation needs, and also allows for new
magic, simpler and more powerful magic.
See Chapter 8 [Controlling where ASDF searches for systems], page 43.
13.3.6 Usual operations are made easier to the user

In ASDF 1, you had to use the awkward syntax (asdf:oos ’asdf:load-op :foo) to load
a system, and similarly for compile-op, test-op.
In ASDF 2, you can use shortcuts for the usual operations: (asdf:load-system :foo),
and similarly for compile-system, test-system.
Chapter 13: FAQ 73
13.3.7 Many bugs have been fixed

The following issues and many others have been fixed:
• The infamous TRAVERSE function has been revamped completely between ASDF 1
and ASDF 2, with many bugs squashed. In particular, dependencies were not correctly
propagated across modules but now are. It has been completely rewritten many times
over between ASDF 2.000 and ASDF 3, with fundamental issues in the original model
being fixed. Timestamps were not propagated at all, and now are. The internal model of
how actions depend on each other is now both consistent and complete. The :version
and the :force (system1 .. systemN) feature have been fixed.
• Performance has been notably improved for large systems (say with thousands of com-
ponents) by using hash-tables instead of linear search, and linear-time list accumulation
instead of cubic time recursive append, for an overall O(n) complexity vs O(n^4).
• Many features used to not be portable, especially where pathnames were involved.
Windows support was notably quirky because of such non-portability.
• The internal test suite used to massively fail on many implementations. While still
incomplete, it now fully passes on all implementations supported by the test suite,
though some tests are commented out on a few implementations.
• Support was lacking for some implementations. ABCL and GCL were notably wholly
broken. ECL extensions were not integrated with ASDF release.
• The documentation was grossly out of date.
13.3.8 ASDF itself is versioned

Between new features, old bugs fixed, and new bugs introduced, there were various releases
of ASDF in the wild, and no simple way to check which release had which feature set.
People using or writing systems had to either make worst-case assumptions as to what
features were available and worked, or take great pains to have the correct version of ASDF
installed.
With ASDF 2, we provide a new stable set of working features that everyone can rely
on from now on. Use #+asdf2 to detect presence of ASDF 2, (asdf:version-satisfies
(asdf:asdf-version) "2.345.67") to check the availability of a version no earlier than
required.
13.3.9 ASDF can be upgraded

When an old version of ASDF was loaded, it was very hard to upgrade ASDF in your
current image without breaking everything. Instead you had to exit the Lisp process and
somehow arrange to start a new one from a simpler image. Something that can’t be done
from within Lisp, making automation of it difficult, which compounded with difficulty in
configuration, made the task quite hard. Yet as we saw before, the task would have been
required to not have to live with the worst case or non-portable subset of ASDF features.
With ASDF 2, it is easy to upgrade from ASDF 2 to later versions from within Lisp,
and not too hard to upgrade from ASDF 1 to ASDF 2 from within Lisp. We support hot
upgrade of ASDF and any breakage is a bug that we will do our best to fix. There are still
limitations on upgrade, though, most notably the fact that after you upgrade ASDF, you
must also reload or upgrade all ASDF extensions.
Chapter 13: FAQ 74
13.3.10 Decoupled release cycle

When vendors were releasing their Lisp implementations with ASDF, they had to basically
never change version because neither upgrade nor downgrade was possible without breaking
something for someone, and no obvious upgrade path was visible and recommendable.
With ASDF 2, upgrade is possible, easy and can be recommended. This means that
vendors can safely ship a recent version of ASDF, confident that if a user isn’t fully satisfied,
he can easily upgrade ASDF and deal with a supported recent version of it. This means
that release cycles will be causally decoupled, the practical consequence of which will mean
faster convergence towards the latest version for everyone.
13.3.11 Pitfalls of the transition to ASDF 2

The main pitfalls in upgrading to ASDF 2 seem to be related to the output translation
mechanism.
• Output translations is enabled by default. This may surprise some users, most of them
in pleasant way (we hope), a few of them in an unpleasant way. It is trivial to disable
output translations. See Chapter 13 [“How can I wholly disable the compiler output
cache?”], page 70.
• Some systems in the large have been known not to play well with output translations.
They were relatively easy to fix. Once again, it is also easy to disable output transla-
tions, or to override its configuration.
• The new ASDF output translations are incompatible with ASDF-Binary-Locations.
They replace A-B-L, and there is compatibility mode to emulate your previous A-B-L
configuration. See enable-asdf-binary-locations-compatibility in see Chapter 9
[Backward Compatibility], page 53. But thou shalt not load ABL on top of ASDF 2.
Other issues include the following:
• ASDF pathname designators are now specified in places where they were unspeci-
fied, and a few small adjustments have to be made to some non-portable defsystems.
Notably, in the :pathname argument to a defsystem and its components, a logical
pathname (or implementation-dependent hierarchical pathname) must now be spec-
ified with #p syntax where the namestring might have previously sufficed; moreover
when evaluation is desired #. must be used, where it wasn’t necessary in the toplevel
:pathname argument (but necessary in other :pathname arguments).
• There is a slight performance bug, notably on SBCL, when initially searching for
asd files, the implicit (directory "/configured/path/**/*.asd") for every config-
ured path (:tree "/configured/path/") in your source-registry configuration can
cause a slight pause. Try to (time (asdf:initialize-source-registry)) to see how
bad it is or isn’t on your system. If you insist on not having this pause, you can avoid
the pause by overriding the default source-registry configuration and not use any deep
:tree entry but only :directory entries or shallow :tree entries. Or you can fix your
implementation to not be quite that slow when recursing through directories. Update:
This performance bug fixed the hard way in 2.010.
• On Windows, only LispWorks supports proper default configuration pathnames based
on the Windows registry. Other implementations make do with environment variables,
that you may have to define yourself if you’re using an older version of Windows.
Chapter 13: FAQ 75
Windows support is somewhat less tested than Unix support. Please help report and
fix bugs. Update: As of ASDF 2.21, all implementations should now use the same
proper default configuration pathnames and they should actually work, though they
haven’t all been tested.
• The mechanism by which one customizes a system so that Lisp files may use a
different extension from the default .lisp has changed. Previously, the pathname
for a component was lazily computed when operating on a system, and you would
(defmethod source-file-type ((component cl-source-file) (system (eql
(find-system ’foo)))) (declare (ignorable component system)) "lis"). Now,
the pathname for a component is eagerly computed when defining the system,
and instead you will (defclass cl-source-file.lis (cl-source-file) ((type
:initform "lis"))) and use :default-component-class cl-source-file.lis
as argument to defsystem, as detailed in a see Chapter 13 [FAQ], page 70, below.
source-file-type is deprecated. To access a component’s file-type, use file-type,
instead. source-file-type will be removed.
13.3.12 Pitfalls of the upgrade to ASDF 3

While ASDF 3 is largely compatible with ASDF 2, there are a few pitfalls when upgrading
from ASDF 2, due to limitations in ASDF 2.
• ASDF 2 was designed so it could be upgraded; but upgrading it required a special
setup at the beginning of your build files. Failure to upgrade it early could result in
catastrophic attempt to self-upgrade in mid-build.
• Starting with ASDF 3 (2.27 or later), ASDF will automatically attempt to upgrade
itself as the first step before any system operation, to avoid any possibility of such
catastrophic mid-build self-upgrade. But that doesn’t help if your old implementation
still provides ASDF 2.
• It was unsafe in ASDF 2 for a system definition to declare a dependency on ASDF,
since it could trigger such catastrophe for users who were not carefully configured. If
you declare a dependency on a recent enough ASDF, yet want to be nice with these
potentially misconfigured users, we recommend that you not only specify a recent ASDF
in your dependencies with :depends-on ((:version "asdf" "3.1.2")), but that you
also check that ASDF 3 is installed, or else the upgrade catastrophe might happen
before that specification is checked, by starting your .asd file with a version check as
follows:
#-asdf3 (error "MY-SYSTEM requires ASDF 3.1.2")
• When you upgrade from too old a version of ASDF, previously loaded ASDF extensions
become invalid, and will need to be reloaded. Example extensions include CFFI-Grovel,
hacks used by ironclad, etc. Since it isn’t possible to automatically detect what ex-
tensions need to be invalidated and what systems use them, ASDF will invalidate all
previously loaded systems when it is loaded on top of a forward-incompatible ASDF
version.1
1
Forward incompatibility can be determined using the variable asdf/upgrade::*oldest-forward-
compatible-asdf-version*, which is 2.33 at the time of this writing.
Chapter 13: FAQ 76
• To write a portable build script, you need to rely on a recent version of UIOP, but until
you have ensured a recent ASDF is loaded, you can’t rely on UIOP being present, and
thus must manually avoid all the pathname pitfalls when loading ASDF itself.
• Bugs in CMUCL and XCL prevent upgrade of ASDF from an old forward-incompatible
version. Happily, CMUCL comes with a recent ASDF, and XCL is more of a working
demo than something you’d use seriously anyway.
• For the above reasons, your build and startup scripts should load ASDF 3, configure
it, and upgrade it, among the very first things they do. They should ensure that only
ASDF 3 or later is used indeed, and error out if ASDF 2 or earlier was used.
• Now that (since May 2016) all maintained implementations (i.e. having had at least one
release since 2014, or a commit on their public source code repository) provide ASDF
3.1 or later, the simple solution is just to use code as below in your setup, and when
it fails, upgrade your implementation or replace its ASDF. (see Section 3.4 [Replacing
your implementation’s ASDF], page 4):
(require "asdf")
#-asdf3.1 (error "ASDF 3.1 or bust")
• For scripts that try to use ASDF simply via require at first, and make heroic attempts
to load it the hard way if at first they don’t succeed, see tools/load-asdf.lisp
distributed with the ASDF source repository, or the code of cl-launch (https://
cliki.net/cl-launch).
• Note that in addition to the pitfalls and constraints above, these heroic scripts (should
you wish to write or modify one), must take care to configure ASDF twice. A first
time, right after you load the old ASDF 2 (or 1!) and before you upgrade to the
new ASDF 3, so it may find where you put ASDF 3. A second time, because most
implementations can’t handle a smooth upgrade from ASDF 2 to ASDF 3, so ASDF 3
doesn’t try (anymore) and loses any configuration from ASDF 2.
(ignore-errors (funcall ’require "asdf")) ;; <--- try real hard
;; <--- insert heroics here, if that failed to provide ASDF 2 or 3
;; <--- insert configuration here, if that succeeded
(asdf:load-system "asdf")
;; <--- re-configure here, too, in case at first you got ASDF 2
13.3.13 What happened to the bundle operations?

asdf-ecl and its short-lived successor asdf-bundle are no more, having been replaced by
code now built into ASDF 3. Moreover, the name of the bundle operations has changed since
ASDF 3.1.3. Starting with ASDF 3.2.0, load-system will once again use load-bundle-op
instead of load-op on ECL, as originally intended by asdf-ecl authors, but disabled for a
long time due to bugs in both ECL and ASDF.
Note that some of the bundle operations were renamed after ASDF 3.1.3, and the old
names have been removed. Old bundle operations, and their modern equivalents are:
• fasl-op is now compile-bundle-op
• load-fasl-op is now load-bundle-op
• binary-op is now deliver-asd-op
• monolithic-fasl-op is now monolithic-compile-bundle-op
Chapter 13: FAQ 77
• monolithic-load-fasl-op is now monolithic-load-bundle-op

• monolithic-binary-op is now monolithic-deliver-asd-op
13.4 Issues with installing the proper version of ASDF

13.4.1 “My Common Lisp implementation comes with an
outdated version of ASDF. What to do?”
If you have a recent implementation, it should already come with ASDF 3 or later. If you
need a more recent version than is provided, we recommend you simply upgrade ASDF
by installing a recent version in a path configured in your source-registry. See Section 3.3
[Upgrading ASDF], page 4.
If you have an old implementation that does not provide ASDF 3, we recommend you
replace your implementation’s ASDF. See Section 3.4 [Replacing your implementation’s
ASDF], page 4.
13.4.2 “I’m a Common Lisp implementation vendor. When and

how should I upgrade ASDF?”
Since ASDF 2, it should always be a good time to upgrade to a recent version of ASDF. You
may consult with the maintainer for which specific version they recommend, but the latest
release should be correct. Though we do try to test ASDF releases against all implemen-
tations that we can, we may not be testing against all variants of your implementation,
and we may not be running enough tests; we trust you to thoroughly test it with your own
implementation before you release it. If there are any issues with the current release, it’s a
bug that you should report upstream and that we will fix ASAP.
As to how to include ASDF, we recommend the following:
• If ASDF isn’t loaded yet, then (require "asdf") should load the version of ASDF
that is bundled with your system. If possible so should (require "ASDF"). You may
have it load some other version configured by the user, if you allow such configuration.
• If your system provides a mechanism to hook into cl:require, then it would be nice
to add ASDF to this hook the same way that ABCL, CCL, CLISP, CMUCL, ECL,
SBCL and SCL do it. Please send us appropriate code to this end.
• You may, like SBCL since 1.1.13 or MKCL since 1.1.9, have ASDF create bundle FASLs
that are provided as modules by your Lisp distribution. You may also, but we don’t
recommend that anymore, as in SBCL up until 1.1.12, have ASDF be implicitly used
to cl:require these modules that are provided by your Lisp distribution; if you do,
you should add these modules in the beginning of both wrapping-source-registry
and wrapping-output-translations.
• If you have magic systems as above, like SBCL used to do, then we explicitly ask you to
NOT distribute asdf.asd as part of those magic systems. You should still include the
file asdf.lisp in your source distribution and precompile it in your binary distribution,
but asdf.asd if included at all, should be secluded from the magic systems, in a
separate file hierarchy. Alternatively, you may provide the system after renaming it
and its .asd file to e.g. asdf-ecl and asdf-ecl.asd, or sb-asdf and sb-asdf.asd.
Indeed, if you made asdf.asd a magic system, then users would no longer be able to
Chapter 13: FAQ 78
upgrade ASDF using ASDF itself to some version of their preference that they maintain
independently from your Lisp distribution.
• If you do not have any such magic systems, or have other non-magic systems that
you want to bundle with your implementation, then you may add them to the
wrapping-source-registry, and you are welcome to include asdf.asd amongst
them. Non-magic systems should be at the back of the wrapping-source-registry
while magic systems are at the front. If they are precompiled, they should also be in
the wrapping-output-translations.
• Since ASDF 3, the library UIOP comes transcluded in ASDF. But if you want to be
nice to users who care for UIOP but not for ASDF, you may package UIOP separately,
so that one may (require "uiop") and not load ASDF, or one may (require "asdf")
which would implicitly require and load the former.
• Please send us upstream any patches you make to ASDF itself, so we can merge them
back in for the benefit of your users when they upgrade to the upstream version.
13.4.3 After upgrading ASDF, ASDF (and Quicklisp) can’t find
my systems
When you upgrade the ASDF running in your Lisp image from an ancient ASDF 2 or older
to ASDF 3 or newer, then you may have to re-configure ASDF. If your configuration only
consists in using the source-registry and output-translations (as it should), and if you are
not explicitly calling asdf:initialize-source-registry or asdf:initialize-output-
translations with a non-nil argument, then ASDF will reconfigure itself. Otherwise,
you will have to configure ASDF 2 (or older) to find ASDF 3, then configure ASDF
3. Notably, *central-registry* is not maintained across upgrades from ASDF 2. See
[reinitializeASDFAfterUpgrade], page 76.
Problems like this may be experienced if one loads Quicklisp (which as of this writing
bundles an obsolete ASDF version 2.26), upgrades ASDF, and then tries to load new sys-
tems. The correct solution is to load the most up-to-date ASDF you can, then configure
it, then load Quicklisp and any other extension. Do not try to upgrade from ASDF 2 af-
ter loading Quicklisp, for it will leave both ASDF and Quicklisp badly misconfigured. For
details see the discussion at the above cross-reference.
Also, if you are experiencing such failures due to Quicklisp shipping an ancient ASDF,
please complain to Zach Beane about it.
13.5 Issues with configuring ASDF

13.5.1 “How can I customize where fasl files are stored?”
See Chapter 9 [Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files], page 53.
Note that in the past there was an add-on to ASDF called ASDF-binary-locations,
developed by Gary King. That add-on has been merged into ASDF proper, then superseded
by the asdf-output-translations facility.
Note that use of asdf-output-translations can interfere with one aspect of your
systems — if your system uses *load-truename* to find files (e.g., if you have some data
files stored with your program), then the relocation that this ASDF customization performs
is likely to interfere. Use asdf:system-relative-pathname to locate a file in the source
Chapter 13: FAQ 79
directory of some system, and use asdf:apply-output-translations to locate a file whose

pathname has been translated by the facility.
13.5.2 “How can I wholly disable the compiler output cache?”

To permanently disable the compiler output cache for all future runs of ASDF, you can:
mkdir -p ~/.config/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/
echo ’:disable-cache’ > \
~/.config/common-lisp/asdf-output-translations.conf.d/99-disable-cache.conf
This assumes that you didn’t otherwise configure the ASDF files (if you did, edit them
again), and don’t somehow override the configuration at runtime with a shell variable (see
below) or some other runtime command (e.g. some call to asdf:initialize-output-
translations).
To disable the compiler output cache in Lisp processes run by your current shell, try
(assuming bash or zsh) (on Unix and cygwin only):
export ASDF_OUTPUT_TRANSLATIONS=/:
To disable the compiler output cache just in the current Lisp process, use (after loading
ASDF but before using it):
(asdf:disable-output-translations)
Note that this does NOT belong in a .asd file. Please do not tamper with ASDF
configuration from a .asd file, and only do this from your personal configuration or build
scripts.
13.6 Issues with using and extending ASDF to define

systems
13.6.1 “How can I cater for unit-testing in my system?”
ASDF provides a predefined test operation, test-op. See Section 7.1.1 [Predefined opera-
tions of ASDF], page 30. The test operation, however, is largely left to the system definer
to specify. test-op has been a topic of considerable discussion on the asdf-devel mailing list
(http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/asdf-devel) (see Section 13.2
[Mailing list], page 70), and on the launchpad bug-tracker (https://launchpad.net/asdf)
(see Section 13.1 [Where do I report a bug?], page 70). We provide some guidelines in the
discussion of test-op.
13.6.2 “How can I cater for documentation generation in my

system?”
Various ASDF extensions provide some kind of doc-op operation. See also https://bugs.
launchpad.net/asdf/+bug/479470.
13.6.3 “How can I maintain non-Lisp (e.g. C) source files?”

See cffi’s cffi-grovel.
Chapter 13: FAQ 80
13.6.4 “I want to put my module’s files at the top level. How do I

do this?”
By default, the files contained in an asdf module go in a subdirectory with the same name
as the module. However, this can be overridden by adding a :pathname "" argument to the
module description. For example, here is how it could be done in the spatial-trees ASDF
system definition for ASDF 2 or later:
(asdf:defsystem "spatial-trees"
:components
((:module "base"
:pathname ""
:components
((:file "package")
(:file "basedefs" :depends-on ("package"))
(:file "rectangles" :depends-on ("package"))))
(:module tree-impls
:depends-on ("base")
:pathname ""
:components
((:file "r-trees")
(:file "greene-trees" :depends-on ("r-trees"))
(:file "rstar-trees" :depends-on ("r-trees"))
(:file "rplus-trees" :depends-on ("r-trees"))
(:file "x-trees" :depends-on ("r-trees" "rstar-trees"))))
(:module viz
:pathname ""
:components
((:static-file "spatial-tree-viz.lisp")))
(:module tests
:pathname ""
:components
((:static-file "spatial-tree-test.lisp")))
(:static-file "LICENCE")
(:static-file "TODO")))
All of the files in the tree-impls module are at the top level, instead of in a tree-impls/
subdirectory.
Note that the argument to :pathname can be either a pathname object or a string.
A pathname object can be constructed with the #p"foo/bar/" syntax, but this is dis-
couraged because the results of parsing a namestring are not portable. A pathname
can only be portably constructed with such syntax as #.(make-pathname :directory
’(:relative "foo" "bar")), and similarly the current directory can only be portably spec-
ified as #.(make-pathname :directory ’(:relative)). However, as of ASDF 2, you can
portably use a string to denote a pathname. The string will be parsed as a /-separated
path from the current directory, such that the empty string "" denotes the current direc-
tory, and "foo/bar" (no trailing / required in the case of modules) portably denotes the
same subdirectory as above. When files are specified, the last /-separated component is
Chapter 13: FAQ 81
interpreted either as the name component of a pathname (if the component class specifies
a pathname type), or as a name component plus optional dot-separated type component (if
the component class doesn’t specifies a pathname type).
13.6.5 How do I create a system definition where all the source

files have a .cl extension?
Starting with ASDF 2.014.14, you may just pass the builtin class cl-source-file.cl as
the :default-component-class argument to defsystem:
(defsystem my-cl-system
:default-component-class cl-source-file.cl
...)
Another builtin class cl-source-file.lsp is offered for files ending in .lsp.
If you want to use a different extension for which ASDF doesn’t provide builtin support,
or want to support versions of ASDF earlier than 2.014.14 (but later than 2.000), you can
define a class as follows:
;; Prologue: make sure we’re using a sane package.
(defpackage :my-asdf-extension
(:use :asdf :common-lisp)
(:export #:cl-source-file.lis))
(in-package :my-asdf-extension)
(defclass cl-source-file.lis (cl-source-file)

((type :initform "lis")))
Then you can use it as follows:
:default-component-class my-asdf-extension:cl-source-file.lis
...)
Of course, if you’re in the same package, e.g. in the same file, you won’t need to use the
package qualifier before cl-source-file.lis. Actually, if all you’re doing is defining this
class and using it in the same file without other fancy definitions, you might skip package
complications:
(in-package :asdf)
(defclass cl-source-file.lis (cl-source-file)
((type :initform "lis")))
:default-component-class cl-source-file.lis
...)
13.6.6 How do I mark a source file to be loaded only and not
compiled?
There is no provision in ASDF for ensuring that some components are always loaded as
source, while others are always compiled. There is load-source-op (see Section 7.1.1
[Predefined operations of ASDF], page 30), but that is an operation to be applied to a
system as a whole, not to one or another specific source files. While this idea often comes
up in discussions, it doesn’t play well with either the linking model of ECL or with various
Chapter 13: FAQ 82
bundle operations. In addition, the dependency model of ASDF would have to be modified
incompatibly to allow for such a trick.
13.6.7 How do I work with readtables?

It is possible to configure the lisp syntax by modifying the currently-active readtable. How-
ever, this same readtable is shared globally by all software being compiled by ASDF, espe-
cially since load and compile-file both bind *readtable*, so that its value is the same
across the build at the start of every file (unless overridden by some perform :around
method), even if a file locally binds it to a different readtable during the build.
Therefore, the following hygiene restrictions apply. If you don’t abide by these restric-
tions, there will be situations where your output files will be corrupted during an incremen-
tal build. We are not trying to prescribe new restrictions for the sake of good style: these
restrictions have always applied implicitly, and we are simply describing what they have
always been.
• It is forbidden to modifying any standard character or standard macro dispatch defined
in the CLHS.
• No two dependencies may assign different meanings to the same non-standard charac-
ter.
• Using any non-standard character while expecting the implementation to treat some
way counts as such an assignment of meaning.
• libraries need to document these assignments of meaning to non-standard characters.
• free software libraries will register these changes on: http: / / www . cliki . net /
Macro%20Characters
If you want to use readtable modifications that cannot abide by those restrictions, you
must create a different readtable object and set *readtable* to temporarily bind it to your
new readtable (which will be undone after processing the file).
For that, we recommend you use system named-readtables to define or com-
bine such readtables using named-readtables:defreadtable and use them using
named-readtables:in-readtable. Equivalently, you can use system cl-syntax, that
itself uses named-readtables, but may someday do more with, e.g. *print-pprint-dispatch*.
For even more advanced syntax modification beyond what a readtable can express, you
may consider either:
• a perform method that compiles a constant file that contains a single form
#.*code-read-with-alternate-reader* in an environment where this special
variable was bound to the code read by your alternate reader, or
• using the system reader-interception.
Beware that it is unsafe to use ASDF from the REPL to compile or load systems while the
readtable isn’t the shared readtable previously used to build software. You must manually
undo any binding of *readtable* at the REPL and restore its initial value whenever you
call operate (via e.g. load-system, test-system or require) from a REPL that is using
a different readtable.
Chapter 13: FAQ 83
13.6.7.1 How should my system use a readtable exported by

another system?
Use from the named-readtables system the macro named-readtables:in-readtable.
If the other system fails to use named-readtables, fix it and send a patch upstream.
In the day and age of Quicklisp and clbuild, there is little reason to eschew using such an
important library anymore.
13.6.7.2 How should my library make a readtable available to
other systems?
Use from the named-readtables system the macro named-readtables:defreadtable.
13.6.8 How can I capture ASDF’s output?

Output from ASDF and ASDF extensions are sent to the CL stream *standard-output*,
so rebinding that stream around calls to asdf:operate should redirect all output from
ASDF operations.
13.6.9 *LOAD-PATHNAME* and *LOAD-TRUENAME* have

weird values, help!
Conventional Common Lisp code may use *LOAD-TRUENAME* or *LOAD-PATHNAME* to find
files adjacent to source files. This will generally not work in ASDF-loaded systems. Recall
that ASDF relocates the FASL files it builds, typically to a special cache directory. Thus
the value of *LOAD-PATHNAME* and *LOAD-TRUENAME* at load time, when ASDF is loading
your system, will typically be a pathname in that cache directory, and useless to you for
finding other system components.
There are two ways to work around this problem:
1. Use the system-relative-pathname function. This can readily be used from outside
the system, but it is probably not good software engineering to require a source file of
a system to know what system it is going to be part of. Contained objects should not
have to know their containers.
2. Store the pathname at compile time, so that you get the pathname of the source file,
which is presumably what you want. To do this, you can capture the value of (or
*compile-file-pathname* *load-truename*) (or *LOAD-PATHNAME*, if you prefer)
in a macro expansion or other compile-time evaluated context.
13.7 ASDF development FAQs

13.7.1 How do I run the tests interactively in a REPL?
This not-so-frequently asked question is primarily for ASDF developers, but those who
encounter an unexpected error in some test may be interested, too.
Here’s the procedure for experimenting with tests in a REPL:
;; BEWARE! Some tests expect you to be in the .../asdf/test directory
;; If your REPL is not there yet, change your current directory:
;; under SLIME, you may: ,change-directory ~/common-lisp/asdf/test/
;; otherwise you may evaluate something like:
(require "asdf") (asdf:upgrade-asdf) ;load UIOP & update asdf.lisp
84
(uiop:chdir (asdf:system-relative-pathname :asdf "test/"))

(setf *default-pathname-defaults* (uiop:getcwd))
;; Load the test script support.

(load "script-support.lisp")
;; Initialize the script support for interaction.

;; This will also change your *package* to asdf-test
;; after frobbing the asdf-test package to make it usable.
;; NB: this function is also available from package cl-user,
;; and also available with the shorter name da in both packages.
(asdf-test:debug-asdf)
;; Now, you may experiment with test code from a .script file.
;; See the instructions given at the end of your failing test
;; to identify which form is needed, e.g.
(run-test-script "test-utilities.script")
85
Ongoing Work
For an active list of things to be done, see the TODO file in the source repository.
Also, bugs are currently tracked on launchpad: https://launchpad.net/asdf.
86
Bibliography
• Andrey Mokhov, Neil Mitchell and Simon Peyton Jones: “Build Systems à la Carte”,
2018. https:// www.microsoft. com/en-us/research /uploads/prod /2018/03/
build-systems-final.pdf This article provides axes along which to describe build
systems in general; ASDF, in addition to being in-image (an axis not considered by
these authors), has the following characteristics: ASDF’s persistent build information
is file modification times (the way ASDF is written, it should be easy enough to write
an extension that modifies it to use a “cloud cache” à la Bazel, but that would involve
using some database, network and cryptographic libraries, which cannot reasonably
be included in the base ASDF, that must remain a minimal bootstrappable system
with no external dependencies). The object model of ASDF was initially designed for
“static” dependencies with a “topological” scheduler, but its defsystem-depends-on
mechanism (and more generally, the ability to call ASDF from within an .asd file)
allows for multiple phases of execution resulting in “dynamic” dependencies with a
“suspending” scheduler. The rebuilder essentially uses a “dirty bit”, except that the
in-image model and the multiple phase support mean that’s actually more than a bit:
instead three bits, the timestamp and a phase depth level. The build is guaranteed
“minimal” in number of steps computed. It is local; it assumes but does not enforce
determinism; it does not assume early cutoff of the build when rebuild dependencies
didn’t change.
• Francois-Rene Rideau: “ASDF 3, or Why Lisp is Now an Acceptable Scripting Lan-
guage”, 2014. This article describes the innovations in ASDF 3 and 3.1, as well as
historical information on previous versions. https://github.com/fare/asdf3-2013
• Alastair Bridgewater: “Quick-build” (private communication), 2012. quick-build is a
simple and robust one file, one package build system, similar to faslpath, in 182 lines of
code (117 of which are not blank, not comments, not docstrings). Unhappily, it remains
unpublished and its IP status is unclear as of April 2014. asdf/package-system is
mostly compatible with it, modulo a different setup for toplevel hierarchies.
• Zach Beane: “Quicklisp”, 2011. The Quicklisp blog and Xach’s personal blogs contain
information on Quicklisp. http://blog.quicklisp.org/ http://lispblog.xach.
com/ (new) http://xach.livejournal.com/ (old)
• Francois-Rene Rideau and Robert Goldman: “Evolving ASDF: More Cooperation,
Less Coordination”, 2010. This article describes the main issues solved by ASDF
2, and exposes its design principles. https: / / common-lisp . net / project / asdf /
ilc2010draft.pdf http://rpgoldman.goldman-tribe.org/papers/ilc2010-asdf.
pdf
• Francois-Rene Rideau and Spencer Brody: “XCVB: an eXtensible Component Verifier
and Builder for Common Lisp”, 2009. This article describes XCVB, a proposed com-
petitor for ASDF; many of its ideas have been incorporated into ASDF 2 and 3, though
many other ideas still haven’t. https://common-lisp.net/project/xcvb/
• Peter von Etter: “faslpath”, 2009. faslpath is similar to the latter quick-build and
our yet latter asdf/package-system extension, except that it uses dot . rather than
slash / as a separator. https://code.google.com/p/faslpath/
Bibliography 87
• Drew McDermott: “A Framework for Maintaining the Coherence of a Running Lisp,”

International Lisp Conference, 2005, available in pre-print form at http://www.cs.
yale.edu/homes/dvm/papers/lisp05.pdf
• Dan Barlow: “ASDF Manual”, 2004. Older versions of this document from the days
of ASDF 1; they include ideas laid down by Dan Barlow, and comparisons with older
defsystems (mk-defsystem) and defsystem (defsystem-4, kmp’s Memo 801).
• Marco Antoniotti and Peter Van Eynde: “DEFSYSTEM: A make for Common Lisp, A
Thoughtful Re-Implementation of an Old Idea”, 2002. The defsystem-4 proposal
available in the CLOCC repository.
• Mark Kantrovitz: “Defsystem: A Portable Make Facility for Common Lisp”, 1990. The
classic mk-defsystem, later variants of which are available in the CLOCC repository
as defsystem-3.x.
• Richard Elliot Robbins: “BUILD: A Tool for Maintaining Consistency in Modular
Systems”, MIT AI TR 874, 1985. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/
a162744.pdf
• Kent M. Pitman (kmp): “The Description of Large Systems”, MIT AI Memo 801,
1984. Available in updated-for-CL form on the web at http://nhplace.com/kent/
Papers/Large-Systems.html
• Dan Weinreb and David Moon: “Lisp Machine Manual”, 3rd Edition MIT, March 1981.
The famous CHINE NUAL describes one of the earliest variants of DEFSYSTEM. (NB:
Not present in the second preliminary version of January 1979) http://bitsavers.
org/pdf/mit/cadr/chinual_3rdEd_Mar81.pdf
88
Concept Index
* D
*features* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 default-registry source config directive . . . . . . . . . . 45
DEFSYSTEM grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
directory source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:
:also-exclude source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:around-compile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
E
:asdf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 exclude source config directive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:asdf2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
:asdf3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
:build-operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 I
:compile-check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 ignore-invalid-entries source config directive . . . . 45
:default-registry source config directive . . . . . . . . . 45 immutable systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 65
:defsystem-depends-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 include source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:directory source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 inherit-configuration source config directive . . . . . 45
:entry-point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
:exclude source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:feature dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 L
:if-feature component option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 launchpad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
:ignore-invalid-entries source config directive . . . . 45 logical pathnames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
:include source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:inherit-configuration source config directive . . . . 45
:require dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 M
:tree source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
:version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 21, 37 mailing list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
:weakly-depends-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
O
A One package per file systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
also-exclude source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
around-compile keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
asdf-output-translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 P
asdf-user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
ASDF output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Package inferred systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
ASDF versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Packages, inferring dependencies from . . . . . . . . . . 25
pathname specifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
ASDF-BINARY-LOCATIONS compatibility . . . . 54
Primary system name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
ASDF-related features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
ASDF-USER package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Q
B Quicklisp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
bug tracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
build-operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 R
readtables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
C
Capturing ASDF output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 S
compile-check keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 serial dependencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
component designator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 system designator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
System names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Concept Index 89
T V
Testing for ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 version specifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
tree source config directive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
90
Function and Macro Index
A M
already-loaded-systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 make . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
apply-output-translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 make-operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
asdf-version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 merge-pathnames* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
C O
oos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 29
clear-configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 operate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 29
clear-output-translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 58 operation-done-p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
clear-source-registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 output-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
clear-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
coerce-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34, 37
compile-file* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 P
compile-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 package-inferred-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
component-depends-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 parse-unix-namestring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
component-pathname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 perform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
primary-system-name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35, 36
D
R
define-package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
register-immutable-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 65
defsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13, 14, 16
register-preloaded-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
disable-output-translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
register-system-packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
require-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
run-program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
E run-shell-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
enable-asdf-binary-locations-
compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 S
ensure-output-translations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
slurp-input-stream . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
ensure-source-registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
source-file-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
subpathname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
subpathname* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
F system-defsystem-depends-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
file-type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 system-depends-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
system-relative-pathname . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 83
find-component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34, 37
system-source-directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
find-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
system-weakly-depends-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
I T
initialize-output-translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 test-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
initialize-source-registry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 traverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
input-files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
U
uiop:define-package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
L
load-asd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
load-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 V
locate-system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 version-satisfies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 42
91
Variable Index
* *oldest-forward-compatible-
*central-registry* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 asdf-version* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
*compile-file-failure-behaviour* . . . . . . . . . . . 60 *source-registry-parameter* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
*compile-file-warnings-behaviour* . . . . . . . . . 60 *standard-output* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
*default-source-registry-exclusions* . . . . . . 49 *system-definition-search-functions* . . . . . . 34
*features* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
*image-dump-hook* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
*LOAD-PATHNAME* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 A
*LOAD-TRUENAME* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 asdf::*user-cache* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
*nil-pathname* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 ASDF_OUTPUT_TRANSLATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
92
Class and Type Index
B M
binary-op (obsolete) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 module. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
monolithic-binary-op (obsolete) . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
monolithic-compile-bundle-op . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 76
monolithic-compile-
C concatenated-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
compile-bundle-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 76 monolithic-concatenate-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . 33
compile-concatenated-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 monolithic-deliver-asd-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 76
compile-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 monolithic-dll-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 monolithic-fasl-op (obsolete) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
concatenate-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 monolithic-lib-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
monolithic-load-bundle-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 76
monolithic-load-compiled-
concatenated-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
D monolithic-load-concatenated-source-op . . . . 33
deliver-asd-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 76 monolithic-load-fasl-op (obsolete) . . . . . . . . . 76
dll-op. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
O
F operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
operation-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
fasl-op (obsolete) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
P
I prepare-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
image-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 prepare-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
program-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
L S
lib-op. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 source-file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
load-bundle-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31, 76 system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
load-compiled-concatenated-source-op . . . . . . 33 system-definition-error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
load-concatenated-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
load-fasl-op (obsolete) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
load-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 T
load-source-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 test-op . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

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ASDF: Another System Definition

2 Quick start summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

6 Defining systems with defsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

6.3.16 if-feature option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

7 The Object model of ASDF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

8 Controlling where ASDF searches for systems . . 43

9 Controlling where ASDF saves compiled files . . 53

11 Miscellaneous additional functionality . . . . . . 61

12 Getting the latest version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

13.4.3 After upgrading ASDF, ASDF (and

Function and Macro Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Class and Type Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

2 Quick start summary

3.1 Loading a pre-installed ASDF

3.2 Checking whether ASDF is loaded

3.3 Upgrading ASDF

3.4 Replacing your implementation’s ASDF

3.5 Loading ASDF from source

4.1 Configuring ASDF to find your systems

4.2 Configuring ASDF to find your systems — old style

4.3 Configuring where ASDF stores object files

4.4 Resetting the ASDF configuration

This function is pushed onto the uiop:*image-dump-hook* by default, which

5.1 Loading a system

5.2 Convenience Functions

make system &rest keys &key &allow-other-keys [Function]

require-system system &rest keys &key &allow-other-keys [Function]

6 Defining systems with defsystem

6.1 The defsystem form

6.2 A more involved example

6.3 The defsystem grammar

# NOTE: Underscores are not permitted.

# see [Complex component names], page 19

system-option := :defsystem-depends-on system-list

source-control := ( keyword string )

module-option := :components component-list

option := :description string

person-or-persons := string | ( string+ )

component-def := ( component-type simple-component-name option* )

component-type := :module | :file | :static-file | other-component-type

other-component-type := symbol-by-name # see [Component types], page 19

# This is used in :depends-on, as opposed to "dependency", which is used

# "dependency" is used in :in-order-to, as opposed to "dependency-def"

# NOTE: pathnames should be all lower case, and have no underscores,

method-form := ( operation-name qual lambda-list &rest body )

6.3.1 System designators

6.3.2 Simple component names (simple-component-name)

When using strings, use lower case exclusively.

6.3.3 Complex component names

6.3.4 Component types

6.3.5 System class names

6.3.6 Defsystem depends on

6.3.8 Weakly depends on

6.3.9 Pathname specifiers

6.3.10 Version specifiers

6.3.12 Feature dependencies

6.3.13 Using logical pathnames

6.3.14 Serial dependencies

6.3.15 Source location (:pathname)

This function is pushed onto the uiop:image-dump-hook by default, which

• changed if it had previously been set from default-pathname-defaults

By default, asdf:central-registry will be empty.

4. Replace asdf:central-registry by a symbol-macro with appropriate magic when