Tool Usage
On aspect of learning how to be a computer scientist is learning how to
wield your tools effectively. Knowing how to use you tools well helps you
get your work done without alot of headaches. Nothing can really take the
place of "Learning by doing", but the following include some minitutorials
to help you gain enough practice so that you can explore on your own later.
If you are only using your Lisp Tools for lab and to minimally get the
homework done, you are probably not getting as much out of this class as you
could be.
Tools Covered
The page includes information on the following tools.
MCL is available on the Macintosh Clusters on Campus ( or at least it
should be). The clusters should be running a version of MCL 3.X.X ( MCL 4.X.X
should be out soon. That doesn't mean it will get installed soon. MCL version
4 runs native on a PowerMac. MCL 3.X.X is 68K code so running it on a PowerMac
doesn't necessarily mean it goes faster. ).
You can also read about what Digitool has to say about
Macintosh Common Lisp
. This company provides maintenance on the product for Apple.
You can find out more about MCL by looking at some minitutorials that have
been put together on
getting MCL started,the debugger, the stepper,
and other aspects of MCL..
Although Lucid, the company, went under (Chapter 11. ) this environment is
still being used around campus.
Harlequin is has bought out Lucid's Lisp Technology and is
provding support. In fact they recently changed the name of the product to
Liquid Common Lisp(TM). However, the
versions we are running here around Tech are definately not up to date.
You will find LCL on OIT machines ( acmex and acmez and I think on the
Sun workstations in the Rich Building, though not the former baird-sun Sparc 5's )
and in the CoC Cities Cluster.
At some point the campus should transition over to Lispworks.
You can find out more about MCL by looking at some minitutorials that have
been put together on
getting LCL started, the debugger, the stepper,
and other aspects of LCL..
This is a new environment that is beginning to be utilized around campus.
Harlequin, who bought Lucid's technology when they went Chapter 11, has their
own product called
LispWorks. They built their environment in the last
couple of years to be quite nice. Once you have the GUI up and running
you might have flashback to all the fun you used to have hack code in
Genera.
You can vist the
Harlequin homepage.
Note: they have a educational version of this environment called
FreeLisp
avialble to students.
You can find out more about MCL by looking at some minitutorials that have
been put together on
getting HLW started, the debugger, the stepper,
and other aspects of HLW..
This is a product available over the web free for students. It is installed on a
free machines around the college so I'm including it in this group of
semi-supported tools.
You can read what Harlequin has to say about their product
FreeLisp. It runs under Windows so it has a GUI interface. It certainly
doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Lispworks.
The tutorials for FreeLisp are still under development. Should be
done Real Soon Now.
Long ago... In a galaxy far away ... there was a company that made workstations
optimized to run Lisp. ( Actually, there were four Lisp Machine vendors.
Symbolics ,
Lisp Machines International (LMI) , Xerox and Texas Instruments. Symbolics is what got used
around here. LMI died first. Xerox ... well if they had fully realized their
potential ... there's a scary thought. Texas Instruments made some slick
hardware...
never understood why they just didn't just help Symbolics make
better hardware and let them do the software. )
If you need help getting used to Genera send me mail. Most Lisp machines
around Tech are being mothballed. It was fun while it lasted. Of the above
Lispworks is probably the closest in feel to Genera.
If you need Genera help I can point you at some manuals and maybe put you
in contact with someone who's memory of Genera has not atrophied as
much as mine. :-)
To be honest, I don't have much use for iAXP86 ( Wintel "PC" ) architecture
machines. I run a Macintosh at home ( with MCL ) and either run HLW on
an RS/6000 in the LAIR or jump onto an idle Lisp Machine. But those of
you looking for alternatives. In other words I can just point you to these
implementation, but I don't have much to say about thier use, since I don't
use them. [ I have installed and used FreeLisp. Not extentsively but enough
to say that it is O.K. ]
The
comp.lang.lisp FAQ
has some information on Free lisp implementations
A Brief summary of the implementation students at Tech have used before with various
degrees of sucess appears below.
Implementation Platform/OS
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLISP DOS, OS2, Atrai ST, Amiga
[ CLtL1 + parts of CLtL2 ] Unix ( Linux, Sun4, Sun386, and others )
GNU Common Lisp ( GCL ) Most Unix Workstations.
[ CLtL1 ]
PowerLisp Macintosh ( $50 sharware ). **
[ CLtL2 - CLOS ]
** NOTE: We have a campus site license for MCL. This means we let Georgia Institute of
Technology students have a copy of MCL for there own machines providing it
doesn't violate our license. Send mail to lyman@cc I can probably put you
in touch with whomever you need to see about getting yourself a copy.
Also recently someone has mostly working port of CMU Lisp to Linux.
This appears to be somewhat of a work in progress... but then again Linux is a
work in progress. Point yourweb browser at:
ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/Linux/devel/lang/lisp/INDEX.html
For the latest CMUCL stuff..
ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/Linux/Incoming/CMUCL-bin*
anonymous ftp sites
CLISP ftp://ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/lisp/clisp/
GCL(linux) ftp://ftp.cc.gatech.edu/pub/Linux/devel/lang/lisp/INDEX.html
GCL ftp://ftp.cli.com/pub/gcl/
As far a CLtL2 compliance goes it seems that CMU Lisp > CLISP > GCL > PowerLisp.
WARNING: GCL seems to be a bug in that it
will accept files with too many right parens at the end of a function definiton
without any warnings. Remember, only legal Common Lisp code
is portable Common Lisp code.
There are also some "cool" commerical implementations that are avaiable for
student use ( you'll have to contact the companies). They are based upon
commerical packages. One is made by Franz and it runs under Windows 3.1
and Windows NT ( I imagine is "Windows 95" ready also). It is called
Allegro CL for Windows. There is a free version of this
environment available at this site,
Allegro CL Lite for Windows.
The other is made by a company called Harlequin and is called
FreeLisp .
The manual is in the distrubtion as html pages. The html pages are also at the
FreeLisp web site. Look in the support section.
commentary on FreeLisp and Allegro CL Web Version
I'm not a windows person so I haven't used either one very much.
I've periodically checked out code I've written in FreeLisp and haven't
had many problems at all ( sorting out CLtL2 vs. CLtL1 quirks mostly ).
[ Except for two major bugs which are documented in the FreeLisp tutorials above.]
The Franz product seems to consume more resources and the included editor
sucks badly. Make sure you get all the patches for Franz's product.
I've put together some material
on using Emacs. This includes running Lisp
as an inferior process underneath Emacs. Several variations
are discussed including GNU Emacs 19.XX, XEmacs , and Fred ( the emacs that
comes with MCL).
A GNU Emacs ( vers. 19+ ) initialization file
that was used for 2360 is avialable. Just copy this to your home directory and
rename it ".emacs" . This file also is usually in ~cs2360/pub/ on PRISM.
RCS is way maintian control over the multple versions of file or group of
files. If RCS is install on your favorite UNIX box you can simply type
"man rcsintro" to get a breif introduction. Otherwise you can take a
gander at my
introduction to RCS.
Back to the Lisp GuildHall Page
Last modified: by Lyman S. Taylor(lyman@cc.gatech.edu)
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