Common Lisp source code organization

Question

I'm new to CL and am using AllegroCL. I'm trying to figure out how to organize my source code to meet the following requirements:

1. I want to prevent the src code from including my test suites.
2. I want to declare project dependencies (both src and test deps) in a portable way so that other members on my team don't have to modify their systems.
3. I want to ease continuous integration on check-ins, including both builds and tests.

I've been trying to creatively use ASDF to meet these requirements, and I can't get it right. How do other people approach this problem? Are these 2 requirements just not "Lispy"?

Answer 1

Use ASDF or use the Allegro CL defsystem tool.

1. make them two different systems. The test suite system depends on the software system.
2. Use relative pathnames, compute absolute pathnames based on the location of the system definition file or, the 'pro' version, use logical pathnames (which are pathnames in CL which can be remapped according to rules).
3. Probably there is an continuous integration tool for Common Lisp, but I haven't used any, yet. Having a defsystem description is a good start.

Answer 2

I am using quicklisp which makes a "quicklisp"-folder in your home-folder in which a "local-project" folder can be found. This one contains a txt file in which you can insert the URIs to the .asd files.

How to use that utility:

• make a "project.asd" and "project-test.asd" in the project folder

project.asd (manages the includes for the pure project code)

(asdf:defsystem :project-name
  :description "description here"
  :version "version here"
  :author "your name here"
  :depends-on (:a
               :list 
               :of
               :dependencie
               :libraries)
  :components ((:file "sourcefileone")
               (:file "sourcefiletwo")))

project-test.asd (manages the includes for the test code)

(asdf:defsystem :project-name-test
  :description "testing"
  ...
  :depends-on (:project-name)
  :components ((:file "sourcefileone-test")
               (:file "sourcefiletwo-test")))

• now insert the URIs for those files into the above named local-projects.txt

• program parallel the project source in < filename>.lisp files and the test-calls in < filename>-test.lisp files (the *-test.lisp files have to contain a test-execute call)

• start your sbcl or whatever you use and then use (ql:quickload "project-name") or (ql:quickload "project-name-test") depending if you just want to load a project or test it.

The only thing you have to do porting this anywhere else, is to write the local-projects.txt on the computer the project is copied on. After that your colleges may depend on it using asdf-files and quickload in any other project they want. For copying the project folder you can either use ctr+c/v or maybe something more sophisticated as git.

For testing I programmed my own small test-suite, but I bet there are good ones out there. More information about quicklisp can be found here and about asdf here. Maybe this question can help you if you get stuck configuring quicklisp.