Subject: Re: ACL 4.3 For Linux license concerns From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/01/03 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3124350472579338@naggum.no> * Johan Kullstam <johan19@idt.net> | i now get franz-lisp-mode when i visit a file with a .l (for *l*isp) | ending. first it cursed about me not having rsh. i installed rsh and it | made eli happy to fire off a slave lisp process. (i don't use rsh for | anything else, can i remove the dependency on it?) it is probably not a good idea to retain the franz-lisp mode in Franz Inc.'s ELI, but I'm not sure here. there is no "Franz Lisp", anymore that I know of, and the stuff that applies to its files are different from that which applies to Common Lisp and Allegro CL. so I took out the franz-lisp-mode stuff in my local version. for Allegro CL, the canonical Lisp file type is "lisp" or "cl". lots of things become needlessly harder if you don't use either of these. | i can pop between source editor and slaved lisp process with C-c l. C-c | C-b compiles. so far so good. i can type in the little function | examples from grahams books and try them out in the lisp slave. is this | how you do it in general? I compile forms with C-M-x all the time, look at the value of special variables with C-u C-c C-s, request arglists with C-c a, macroexpand with C-c m, describe symbols with C-c d, and most usefully jump to definitions with C-c . and list callers with C-c c. I also use fi:edit-who-calls (bound to C-c e) when I change the signature of a function. all very useful stuff. I also use the :edit top-level command a lot, and even use the ED function to edit files with logical pathnames, since Emacs doesn't (yet) interface to Allegro CL in that way. | i am still a bit stumped about how the process is supposed to work. I find it hard to explain. the way I use Allegro CL is a function of what I have discovered that I can do. I fire up a number of listeners as the need arises and basically leave the Initial Lisp Listener alone (the trace output from Lisp processes go there, so it gets really cluttered if I try to do anything useful while tracing something). | using make and command line compile commands and getting a normal unix | executable as with C or fortran doesn't seem to be the right thing with | lisp. that's right. however, if you view the Unix way a little differently, it's actually a _subset_ of the way you do it in Lisp. with Unix, you edit a file, invoke some function to make its definitions available in your environment, then invoke the function you just defined. Unix stores its functions in files, while Lisp stores them in memory. either way, you invoke them basically the same way: you give each command loop a form to evaluate (the parentheses are implied in Unix, and you get a PROGN wrapper for free if you use the ; syntax). (the first word is even the name of the function. prefix syntax rules!) the functions you invoke are just a little different between the two otherwise quite similar modes of operation. take "foo.c" and "bar.cl". you would invoke the compiler on "foo".c and get "foo". you would invoke COMPILE-FILE on "bar.cl" (or use FI:COMPILE-AND-LOAD-FILE directly from the buffer, which can conveniently be bound to the same key you bound M-x compile to in other modes). Lisp needs you to LOAD the file if you hadn't already done that. Allegro CL comes with three top-level commands that can save you some typing. :cf (compile-file), :ld (load), and :cl (compile-and-load), and all abbreviated with wild abandon, just like Unix tools. they also remember what you did last. (I think they should have had the same memory, though.) Unix `make' is convenient in that it has a bunch of predefined ways to compile a number of files, and the Makefile is a nice place to store variable settings. if you want to make use the DEFSYSTEM facility in Allegro CL, you'll find that the defaults are less elaborate and you might need to say something like (defsystem :foo (:pretty-name "Functional Object Orientation" :default-pathname #L"foo:src;") (:serial "foo" "bar" "zot")) then you'd say (compile-system :foo) or (load-system :foo :compile t) or the like, and things are taken care of. (it would have be nice if the top-level loop had had commands like :cs and :ls, but when I take the time to figure out how to make top-level commands, I'll post something.) all in all, I think of Unix depriving me of the conveniences, and being rather limited in functions that have to do everything to remember their previous state themselves, but, really, a Unix command is no different from calling a Lisp function: Lisp: (foo "x" 14 :mumble t :frotz nil) GNU style: foo --mumble --no-frotz x 14 Unix style: foo -m -n x 14 the conveniences in Unix (like `make') are there because the lack of them would be inconvenient. that's how it usually goes with conveniences. to see how that would work in a language that doesn't have those particular conveniences, step back a little and think of what you'd do without them: you'd call the C compiler yourself on the particular file, and specify the output file. the conveniences of `make' is that it compiles only if needed and you don't need to tell it any file types. unsurprisingly, that's what the :cl command does in Allegro CL. the command :cl foo looks for a file foo.cl (or foo.lisp), sees if it is newer than the foo.fasl (or similar) file, compiles it if necessary, then loads it. and just as `make' takes a list of files to make something from, :cl takes a list of files to compile and load. another bonus with LOAD-SYSTEM, by the way, is that it only loads the files it needs to load, so you don't run initializatio code unless you need to. the same applies to forms you compile with C-M-x: they are compiled in the same environment they are expected to run: with all the other functions and variables loaded. obviously, it works best to start off your work session by loading the last working version of your code. both LOAD (:ld) and LOAD-SYSTEM default to loading compile files rather than source files, so you're "safe" in that regard, too. I hope this helps. I don't know any people who use Allegro CL exactly the same way, and what works for me may not even be useful advice for others. and remember: nothing beats reading the manual. #:Erik -- if people came with documentation, could men get the womanual?