A few days ago I posted instructions for getting a freeware based Common Lisp installation running on your Mac. I have since discovered a better alternative: just install LispWorks Personal Edition, a free environment with a superb set of debugging and profiling tools. Note that it does have the restriction that it will only run for five hours at a time. Once you hit the four hour mark, it gives you a warning, after which you should shutdown and restart the environment. But really, if you’re Lisping for more than four hours every day, that’s great news.
The other option is Lisp in a Box, which offers a completely self-contained freeware Lisp environment that’s ready to download and run on your Mac.
Since the Lisp in a Box site has gotten a little stale with regard to OS X, I’ve created a new package based on Aquamacs, which I call Ready Lisp. The advantage to this package is that it downloads as a single Application bundle. You just drag-and-drop it into your /Applications directory, double-click and go! You’ll have all of the following tools immediately at your disposal:
- Aquamacs 1.2a
- SBCL 1.0.10
- SLIME (CVS version 2007-09-27)
But the nicest part for those new to Emacs and Lisp is that everything is pre-configured and setup for you. Once you double-click the packaged application, you will find yourself at a REPL where you can start right away:
CL-USER> (format nil "Hello, world!")
"Hello, world!"
CL-USER>The disk image is 44 Mb and can be downloaded from my Lisp repository over FTP. Also, please note that this package is for Intel Macs only. If you need an easy Lisp to run on the PowerPC architecture, I suggested you visit the Lisp in a Box site and download one of their packages based on OpenMCL.
Happy Lisping!
That is a great news, I will give this image a try after work. I am new to MacPorts. Yesterday, I spent most of my night playing MacPorts, learning commands like install, uninstall, activate, deactivate etc, but still can not make lisp running on emacs :-(
This is fantastic, I have been trying to get an open source lisp install for years. Thank you!! I am not a lisp programmer, but very much want to get some old lisp code running for a project I am doing. “Hello World” works fine, but I cannot get the lisp code I have to compile. The file I am instructed to start with has the extension *.cl, and all the files, and the Ready Lisp exe are in the same folder on an intelMac running 10.4.10. The install instructions state: To compile GATE, do (load “gate_compile”). The file is gate_compile.cl, but I get an error stating “gate_compile.lisp” not found. Any suggestions?
Well, SBCL will look for files with a .lisp extension by default. You may want to do some googling to see how to change the default extension that SBCL uses.
I posted a link to this blog entry in comp.lang.lisp:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_frm/thread/3cac68209b1143cd/554fe71374085e70#554fe71374085e70
Ready Lisp answers every wish I had for a development environment for those new to Common Lisp.
Thank you!
Also posted to programming.reddit.com:
http://programming.reddit.com/info/601fu/comments/
:)
Gregory: try (load “gate_compile.lisp”). You’re probably also going to want to use an absolute pathname. Lisp’s default-pathname-defaults and your ‘current directory’ are probably not the same thing.
Cheers, drewc
i meant gate_compile.cl .. that is to say include extension. or rename the file.
Is there a straightforward way to swap a new SBCL into the app?
I have a need for the experimental threading in the …12 version to run ACT-R, and I -think- I might have figured out what needs to be done to install it but am not 100% sure
flip, there is a version now with 1.0.12 included and support for threading on Intel platforms. It’s also Universal and offers support for PowerPC!
ftp://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/lisp/ReadyLisp-1.0.12-10.5.1.dmg
Any help appreciated.
Ready Lisp only works on OS X Leopard. That error occurs only on 10.4 Tiger.