skel

This library started as a Rust crate but was re-written in Lisp as the purpose of the library grew from managing a small collection of user-space libraries (also written in Rust) to managing large collections in many different langs.

It is obvious in hindsight, that this project needs Lisp. Today, skel built on CLOS with classes and methods exposing the core API.

The library core is built on CLOS. Most important data structures are represented with classes, slots, and methods such as the sk-project class which has a slot named :components and a method specialized on it called load-ast.

We make use of mixins defined within the library like sk-meta as well as classes defined downstream - the sxp class for example provides a default method for AST functions (load-ast build-ast) and is defined in the std/sxp package.

On top of the core we build our compilers or 'translators' which convert core objects to a corresponding external representation. For example the makefile and mk-* classes defined in skel/comp/make can be built from a sk-project and sk-* instances. Once built, the sk-compile method can be used to actually generate the GNU Make output as a stream of bytes.

The remainder of the skel system is dedicated to extensions. These are all optional. There are built-in extension called tools which run within the skel system and external extensions (ext) which integrate with a particular external system.

The tools we provide are similar to Cargo's custom commands, but they don't need to be a separate binary - they can be compiled into the core image. The downside is that this requires re-compiling skel every time you want to add a new tool. However since this is Lisp not Rust, we can compile anywhere - including from within skel itself.

ext contains extensions for external systems. These modules are the 'edges' of the system and provide support to programs which need to be able to access skel data at runtime. These modules always compiled separately and aren't built into the default core image.