Sean Champ's List: Common Lisp the Platform

• facilitates the writing of translators from C header files to foreign function interfaces for particular language implementations.
• Manifesto and Overview
• User's Manual (
• Back-end for Chez Scheme Version 5
• ANSI C compiler lcc
• based on the front-end of
• The FFIGEN front-end
• FFIGEN back-ends
• Scheme is the preferred language for back-ends right now
• a back-end written in Scheme is already available for new back-ends to build on.
• left out of distribution.
• an example
• policy file,

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• the   common-lisp.net CVS instructions
• can also   browse the repository

• kernel and a heap image
• The kernel is an ordinary C program, and  is built with a C compiler. It provides very basic and  fundamental facilities, such as memory management, garbage  collection, and bootstrapping
• the higher-level features are  written in Lisp, and compiled into the heap image.
• neither the kernel  nor the heap image can stand alone.

• In principle it should be possible to use another  implementation of Common Lisp as the host compiler, rather than an  older Clozure CL; this would be a challenging and experimental way to  build, and is not described here.

   

   

   

   

   
• fasl files store the  machine code associated with function definitions and the  external representation of other lisp objects in a compact,  machine-readable form
• fasl is short for  “FASt  Loading”
• Clozure CL uses different pathname  types (extensions) to name fasl files on different platforms;
• basic job is to  map a lisp heap image into memory, transfer control to some  compiled lisp code that the image contains, handle any  exceptions that occur during the execution of that lisp code,  and provide various other forms of runtime support for that  code.
• The Lisp  kernel is a C program with a fair amount of  platform-specific assembly language code
• Platform-specific filename conventions

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• Binary files that have been locally modified (a rebuilt lisp kernel or heap image counts as a modification) generally can't be merged with newer versions from the repository.
• Therefore, if you notice that the lisp kernel or heap image have been updated, and the line is marked with a "C", the correct response is to revert the file:
• svn revert some-file
• 3. Once svn has finished creating local copies of files that have changed on the svn server since the last time you did this (or since the tarballs were created), use the currently installed Clozure CL to compile the updated sources and build a new kernel and heap image: 
• As an alternative to the above multi-step process, you can start up the lisp and evaluate (rebuild-ccl :update t :full t). This will run svn update and try to take care of conflicts involving the lisp kernel and heap image binaries automatically.

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• Often, the trunk version of CCL is perfectly usable for day-to-day work; sometimes, it doesn't even build or run reliably

• is a free Common Lisp implementation

• formerly known as  OpenMCL (see sidebar
• project web site
• was forked from MCL in 1998

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