There is a new version of Ready Lisp for Mac OS X available. This version is based on SBCL 1.0.16, and requires OS X Leopard 10.5. The most notable change from the previous version is that 64-bit mode and experimental threading are no longer supported, since both have been known to have issues on OS X, while the purpose of Ready Lisp is to smoothly introduce Common Lisp to new users.

What is Ready Lisp? It’s a binding together of several popular Lisp packages for OS X, including: Aquamacs, SBCL and SLIME. Once downloaded, you’ll have a single application bundle which you can double-click — and find yourself in a fully configured Common Lisp REPL. It’s ideal for OS X users who want to try out Lisp with a minimum of hassle. The download is approximately 76 megabytes.

There is a GnuPG signature for this file in the same directory; append .asc to the above filename to download it. To install my public key onto your keyring, use this command:

$ gpg —keyserver pgp.mit.edu —recv 0x824715A0

Once installed, you can verify the download using the following command:

$ gpg —verify ReadyLisp.dmg.asc

For more information, see the Ready Lisp project page.

Tags: Common Lisp, SLIME, SBCL

A couple of pathname issues were discovered in the release of Ready Lisp that was posted yesterday, leading to the inability to load asdf-install (or use it). These have been fixed in the new release uploaded today. If you now use asdf-install and choose a “system-wide” installation, the installed packages get saved in your Application bundle. However, due to the way that asdf-install itself works, if you then move your application bundle to another directory, symbolic links in the systems directory will get broken. So I recommend installing new packages into your home directory instead.

Also, the sources for SBCL are now included, meaning that if you use M-. (jump to definition) and pick a function like mapcar, it will drop you into the source code for SBCL’s mapcar implementation.

The new version is available here (the old link still works, it is now a reference to that one).

Lastly, I’ve created a new home page for the Ready Lisp project, which now lives here.

Tags: Common Lisp, SLIME, SBCL

There is a new version of Ready Lisp for Mac OS X available. This version is based on SBCL 1.0.12.17, and requires OS X Leopard 10.5. The most notable change from the previous version is that it is now fully universal, supporting PowerPC and 32- bit and 64-bit Intel machines. Also, threading has been turned on for Intel processor. See the NEWS below.

What is Ready Lisp? It’s a binding together of several popular Lisp packages for OS X, including: Aquamacs, SBCL and SLIME. Once downloaded, you’ll have a single application bundle which you can double-click — and find yourself in a fully configured Common Lisp REPL. It’s ideal for OS X users who want to try out Lisp with a minimum of hassle. The download is approximately 87 megabytes.

There is a GnuPG signature for this file in the same directory; append .asc to the above filename to download it. To install my public key onto your keyring, use this command:

$ gpg —keyserver pgp.mit.edu —recv 0x824715A0

Once installed, you can verify the download using the following command:

$ gpg —verify ReadyLisp-1.0.12-10.5.1.dmg.asc

Below is a full rundown of what’s new.

Now fully universal

Ready Lisp is now fully universal, and runs on the following platforms:

• Intel 64-bit
• Intel 32-bit
• PowerPC 32-bit

There is no port of SBCL to 64-bit PowerPC. Experimental threading has been enabled for both Intel platforms.

Updated versions

The following pieces were updated:

• SBCL, to version 1.0.12.17
• SLIME, to CVS version 2007-12-06

Aquamacs remains at version 1.2a.

Full Info documentation

Info documentation for the Common Lisp pieces is now bundled in. Just type C-h i to read it. Also, when editing Common Lisp files, you can type C-h f to instantly access the HyperSpec index. In Emacs Lisp files, C-h f will get you help on Emacs Lisp functions.

There is also HTML and PDF versions of all documentation in:

• Ready Lisp.app/Contents/Resources/html
• Ready Lisp.app/Contents/Resources/doc

More libraries

There are a few more Common Lisp libraries bundled in the core file with this release:

• CL-FAD
• LOCAL-TIME
• SERIES
• MEMOIZE
• CL-PPCRE

I find these libraries very handy, but mainly I’m including them because the upcoming release of my CL-Ledger accounting tool depends on them, so it will work for Ready Lisp users out-of-the-box. See the “doc” subdirectory above for documentation on how to use these libraries (except MEMOIZE, which does not have separate documentation; use memoize:memoize-function to mark a function as memoized).

Tags: Common Lisp, SLIME, SBCL

After upgrading my system to Leopard this weekend, I decided to refresh Ready Lisp as well. It now contains both 32-bit and 64-bit builds of SBCL (which has been bumped to 1.0.11), so if you have a Core 2 Duo machine, you’ll be running Lisp at full 64-bit! Alas, Emacs itself cannot support 64-bit as a Carbon app, because there are no 64-bit Carbon libraries. SLIME has also been updated, to CVS latest as of today. Aquamacs is still the same version at 1.2a.

I did spend several hours trying to build a fully Universal package that would run on PowerPC as well (I have a PowerBook G4 in addition to this MacBook Pro), but it seems Leopard has broken the PowerPC port of SBCL. Some of the core OS structures have changed, such as os_context_t.

Ready Lisp is now being versioned according to the SBCL version it contains, which makes today’s release ReadyLisp-1.0.11-10.5-x86.dmg. The older version, which still works on 10.4, can be downloaded here.

NOTE: The recent loading bug for Leopard users has been fixed. Please re-download. Also, it still does not work on OS X 10.4 (Tiger) at the moment. I will have to create a separate build of SBCL for that version this weekend.

Tags: Common Lisp, SLIME, SBCL