Aleksej Saushev wrote:
> Raymond Toy <toy.raymond at gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>>
>>> No, I mean that _temp_-dir should be temporary (in accordance to POLA),
>>>
>>>
>> POLA?
>>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishment
>
> Here "tempdir" is expected to be temporary one, which is /tmp, /var/tmp
> or wherever ${TMPDIR} points to. User home directory is the less expected
> value for it, contrary to temporary directory it is expected to persist
> and enter backup system.
>
I agree with that, but I don't know the history of how it came to be
this way.
>>
>> Unlike .o files from C, fasl files are important in Lisp.
>>
>
> To me it looks the same way: the only need for object files is time saving,
> you can easily skip that step (e.g. Borland "Turbo" compilers did that).
> I don't see how "fasl" files are more important.
>
Yeah, I guess in that respect they're the same.
But if I have to wait 30 minutes every time to compile some file for
donlp2, I won't be happy. Or if I just loaded the lisp file and
interpreted it, I wouldn't be happy if now every problem takes minutes
instead of seconds. :-)
> After more thought I think that you're really looking for "MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX",
> this does solve what you want: when set - user may set - "fasl" files are put
> into respective directory and searched there, when unset you use default value,
> which is "~/.maxima/fasl/" for user, and some another directory like
> /var/lib/maxima/fasl/ for root.
>
>
>
Yes, that was basically proposed earlier. Except the default wouldn't
change between a user and root unless someone set the variable.
Ray