Enable cl-annot for all files in an asdf project

Tagged as lisp

Written on 2020-02-21

Quick lisp tip for enabling cl-annot reader macros across an entire asdf project.

cl-annot enables @ annotation syntax for some Common Lisp operations.

For example, using cl-annot you can export a function like so:

@export
(defun foo ()
  "foo")

;; expands to ->
(progn
  (export 'foo)
  (defun foo ()
    "foo"))

Using cl-annot requires adding this code to the header of each .lisp file:

(annot:enable-annot-syntax)

This can be cumbersome for large asdf projects, which have many files. If you'd like to avoid pasting that header everywhere, you can use asdf's :around-compile hook:

(defsystem your-project
  :name "your-project"
  :components
  (...)
  :around-compile "(lambda (compile-fn)
                     (annot:enable-annot-syntax)
                     (funcall compile-fn))")

The string defining the lambda will enable annotations before each file in your project is compiled.

Now you can use cl-annot for any file in your project.

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