Free Common Lisp for PPC?

fri...@tezcat.com

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May 3, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/3/98

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I wonder whether/where I can lay hands on a free version of Common
LISP that will work on my machine.

The obvious candidate would be CMU Common LISP, but is seems to
come either in binary form for a processor I don't have, or in source
form, including assembly code for a processor I don't have. When
CMUCL says "Linux," it means "Linux on x86." I'm running Linux on a
PowerPC 750.

I know the hairy-chested thing to do is to dig into the assembly
source and translate it all into PPC. I don't have the time, and
maybe I don't have the chest hair.

Is there a free CL for PowerPC Linuces?

--
Fritz Anderson Evanston, Illinois
<fritza at tezcat, a commercial site>

Bruno Haible

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May 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/4/98

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> I wonder whether/where I can lay hands on a free version of Common

> LISP that will work on my machine. ... I'm running Linux on a PowerPC 750.

You can use CLISP,
ftp://ftp2.cons.org/pub/lisp/clisp/binaries/powerpc-mklinux-libc6/

Bruno

David Bakhash

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May 4, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/4/98

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what are the downsides of CLISP? I noticed that it's .fas files are
still ascii. does that imply that they're somehow limited in how fast
they can exectute (relative to, say, Allegro, which dumps some sort of
binary in its .fasl files).

dave

Erik Naggum

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May 5, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/5/98

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* David Bakhash

| what are the downsides of CLISP?

mainly lack of commitment to ANSI Common Lisp. the developers have many
peculiar attitudes against several important aspects of the language, and
have refused to implement necessary functionality to support writing
ANSI-conforming Common Lisp code. it is also slow in some areas and very
fast in others, which skews your priorities in optimizing your code,
basically away from writing your own abstractions and using "raw Common
Lisp", because it does that really fast. it has an amazingly fast bignum
implementation, for instance. it also sports variable-length floating
point numbers. such things may matter much to some. conformance matters
more to me, so I don't use CLISP, anymore.

| I noticed that it's .fas files are still ascii. does that imply that
| they're somehow limited in how fast they can exectute (relative to, say,
| Allegro, which dumps some sort of binary in its .fasl files).

this is a very faulty conclusion. what you see is never what you get.
external and internal representation of objects has long been a major
issue with the Lisp family. a list is not a list in memory, it's a
number of cons cells and machine pointers and such. the external form of
the function objects in CLISP is ASCII for a number of good reasons. the
internal form is efficient in its own ways and is still machine bytes.
the external form of various objects in Allegro's FASL files are binary
for a number of good reasons. the internal form is efficient in its own
ways, but the FASL file still interpreted as a byte stream to conctruct
them. so it's same difference.

#:Erik
--
Support organized crime: use Microsoft products!

Raymond Toy

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May 5, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/5/98

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Erik Naggum <cle...@naggum.no> writes:

> * David Bakhash
> | what are the downsides of CLISP?
>
> mainly lack of commitment to ANSI Common Lisp. the developers have many
> peculiar attitudes against several important aspects of the language, and
> have refused to implement necessary functionality to support writing
> ANSI-conforming Common Lisp code. it is also slow in some areas and very

If you are talking about the float contagion rule, then this is being
changed right now. The user will have a choice in how float contagion
is handled, including an ANSI-CL conforming mode.

Ray

Philippe Laliberte

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May 5, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/5/98

to Erik Naggum

Erik Naggum <cle...@naggum.no> writes:

> point numbers. such things may matter much to some. conformance matters
> more to me, so I don't use CLISP, anymore.
>

May I ask what your using nowadays? I'm looking for something
to port to Linuxppc so ideas are welcomed.

--

Bonne journée,
Have a nice day,

Erik Naggum

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May 6, 1998, 3:00:00 AM5/6/98

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* Philippe Laliberte

| May I ask what your using nowadays?

Allegro CL (version 4.3.1 for Unix) from Franz Inc.

| I'm looking for something to port to Linuxppc so ideas are welcomed.

I'm sorry, but I don't know about anything available for the Power PC.