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Common Lisp is a very stable language. The standard hasn't changed in twenty years, so (unlike many other languages) old code is still perfectly good. Libraries
by juki 10y ago
Common Lisp is a very stable language. The standard hasn't changed in twenty years, so (unlike many other languages) old code is still perfectly good. Libraries that haven't been updated in a decade still work just as well as they did a decade ago.
- nerdponx 10y agoThis is nice to know. Do Quicklisp packages typically come with test suites? At least then I can check if a package will work before I commit to using it.
- guicho271828 10y agoYes, almost certainly, except very fresh new libraries.
- juki 10y agoTypically yes. You should be able to run the test suite through ASDF. For example CL-USER> (ql:quickload :trivia) ... loads ... CL-USER> (asdf:test-system :trivia) ... test output ... But unfortunately not all libraries set up their test-ops properly. You can usually find a readme at ~/quicklisp/dists/quicklisp/software/... which might have instructions for running tests.
- felideon 10y agoYou can also check out cl-test-grid[1] and its results[2]. It shows every quicklisp library tested against every (?) CL distribution. [1] https://github.com/cl-test-grid/cl-test-grid https://github.com/cl-test-grid/cl-test-grid [2] https://common-lisp.net/project/cl-test-grid/library/ https://common-lisp.net/project/cl-test-grid/library/
- aidenn0 10y agoNot only do many of the do, it is common practice for release candidates of asdf, sbcl (and probably other implementations) to run those tests against release candidates as a regression test.
- brudgers 10y agoIt's not just that standard hasn't changed in almost twenty-five years, most of it was agreed upon in the early 1980's and it was developed by consensus among a language community of working programmers and commercial interests.