Setting up a Common Lisp environment Download as PDF, TXT Anthony Le Cigne August 20, 2021 See the relevant section of my dotfiles for the configuration files. 1 SBCL I use SBCL as my Common Lisp implementation of choice. Source code and binaries can be found here;I usually prefer to let my package manager do the job: sudo aptitude sbcl As of [2020-04-19 Sun]: sbcl --version …results in… SBCL 2.0.3.debian …for me. 2 Quicklisp Quicklisp is a library manager for Common Lisp. 1. Download the install script. wget https://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp 2. Load it. sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp 3. Install Quicklisp. I prefer to install it in ~/.quicklisp. (quicklisp-quickstart:install :path ".quicklisp/") 4. Notify SBCL about Quicklisp. Add this to your .sbclrc file: #-quicklisp (let ((quicklisp-init (merge-pathnames ".quicklisp/setup.lisp" (user-homedir-pathname)))) (when (probe-file quicklisp-init) (load quicklisp-init))) 1 2.1 Optional Run sbcl again to check everything is right by trying to download a package. (ql:quickload "vecto") Output: To load "vecto": Load 1 ASDF system: asdf Install 5 Quicklisp releases: cl-vectors salza2 vecto zpb-ttf zpng ; Fetching #<URL "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/salza2/2013-07-20/salza2-2.0.9.tgz"> ; 15.16KB ================================================== 15,525 bytes in 0.02 seconds (631.71KB/sec) ; Fetching #<URL "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/zpng/2015-04-07/zpng-1.2.2.tgz"> ; 39.20KB ================================================== 40,141 bytes in 0.08 seconds (490.00KB/sec) ; Fetching #<URL "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/zpb-ttf/2013-07-20/zpb-ttf-1.0.3.tgz"> ; 43.82KB ================================================== 44,869 bytes in 0.08 seconds (554.65KB/sec) ; Fetching #<URL "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/cl-vectors/2018-02-28/cl-vectors-20180228-git.tgz"> ; 30.68KB ================================================== 31,415 bytes in 0.04 seconds (697.24KB/sec) ; Fetching #<URL "http://beta.quicklisp.org/archive/vecto/2017-12-27/vecto-1.5.tgz"> ; 69.10KB ================================================== 70,758 bytes in 0.11 seconds (628.18KB/sec) ; Loading "vecto" [package net.tuxee.aa]............................ [package net.tuxee.aa-bin]........................ [package net.tuxee.paths]......................... [package net.tuxee.vectors]....................... [package salza2].................................. [package zpng].................................... [package zpb-ttf]................................. [package vecto]........ ("vecto") 3 ASDF Another System Definition Facility. The following instructions are documented here, as of [2019-11-12 Tue]. 1. Create the following directory: ~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/ 2. Create a .conf file - I use my-asdf.conf. In this file, add a line like this one: (:tree "/home/alc/src/") You should find this file here. Since I keep my programming projects in /home/alc/src/, this will tell ASDF to recursively scan this directory looking for .asd files. Of course choose your own dir:) I wouldn’t keep the .quicklisp directory in there. I didn’t test it, but that might have a few funky effects. 2 3.1 Optional Let’s test things out by cloning a Lisp project managed with ASDF. I will use one of my projects for this test: git clone https://github.com/alecigne/freecomm src/freecomm sbcl Then: (ql:quickload :freecomm) At this step the project dependencies should be downloaded: * (ql:quickload "freecomm") To load "freecomm": Load 1 ASDF system: freecomm ; Loading "freecomm" .................................................. [package iterate]................................. [package cl-unicode].............................. [package cl-unicode-names]........................ [package editor-hints.named-readtables]........... [package editor-hints.named-readtables]........... [package cl-interpol]............................. [package cl-csv].................................. [package freecomm]. ("freecomm") (in-package :freecomm) You should enter the freecomm package: * (in-package :freecomm) #<PACKAGE "FREECOMM"> 4 SLIME SLIME is the Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs. 1. Install it. • Using use-package (use-package slime :config (when (eq system-type 'gnu/linux) (setq slime-contribs '(slime-fancy) slime-protocol-version 'ignore) (setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl"))) • Using the package manager directly Run M-x package-install RET slime RET. Don’t forget to set your default Lisp by evaluating this expression: (setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl") 2. Launch it with M-x slime and start exploring. 3 5 Creating a Lisp project Quickproject is pretty neat for creating a Common Lisp project from scratch. 1. Create a project. (ql:quickload :quickproject) (quickproject:make-project #p"~/src/my-quickproject-test/") 2. Load the project: (ql:quickload :my-quickproject-test) 3. We will now create a small Common Lisp project that will be useful in the next section. In my-quickproject-test.lisp, add this main function: (defun main (argv) (declare (ignore argv)) (write-line "Hello, world")) That’s it! 6 Compilation Buildapp is pretty cool. 1. Install it. (ql:quickload :buildapp) 2. Build buildapp itself. (buildapp:build-buildapp) The binary will be created in the current directory. 3. We’ll now build my-quickproject-test :) Change the buildapp directory to match yours; I use ~/bin/buildapp. ~/bin/buildapp --output my-quickproject-test \ --load-system my-quickproject-test \ --entry my-quickproject-test:main 4. Run the program: ./my-quickproject-test. You should see: ./my-quickproject-test Hello, world 7 StumpWM 1. Clone the StumpWM repository: git clone https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm 2. Install the dependencies: (ql:quickload '("clx" "cl-ppcre" "alexandria" "swank")) 3. Compile it: 4 ./autogen.sh ./configure make 4. I prefer to link to the executable: ln -s ~/src/stumpwm/stumpwm ~/bin/stumpwm 5. Create ~/.xinitrc and add this line (point to your own executable or link): exec /home/alc/bin/stumpwm 6. Run startx: it should work! 7.1 Optional You can connect to the Lisp process that StumpWM uses from SLIME. 1. Add this to your StumpWM init.lisp: (in-package :stumpwm) (require :swank) (swank-loader:init) (defcommand swank () () (setf *top-level-error-action* :break) (swank:create-server :port 4005 :style swank:*communication-style* :dont-close t)) (swank) If you encounter an error when running StumpWM with startx, try setting SBCL_HOME. See this comment. 2. Add this config to Emacs: (defun yourname-swank-listening-p () (ignore-errors (let ((p (open-network-stream "SLIME Lisp Connection Test" nil "localhost" 4005))) (when p (delete-process p) t)))) (defun yourname-swank-autoconnect (&rest args) (if (and (not (slime-connected-p)) (yourname-swank-listening-p)) (ignore-errors (slime-connect "localhost" 4005)))) (yourname-swank-autoconnect)) When you launch Emacs, if SLIME isn’t already running and if a Swank connection is available, SLIME will connect to it. Then in the REPL, you can do this: (in-package :stumpwm) (message "hello world") The message should appear on the screen. 5.