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SLIME + Windows 7 + XEmacs + CLISP 2.48 +/- quicklisp = Mission Impossible

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Kelly Miller

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Jul 20, 2012, 12:48:04 AM7/20/12
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Please forgive me for posting what might be a very common request for help, and please let me know if this is this is the wrong newsgroup for doing so. And yes, I'm sure this works great on LINUX and my issues are with the quality of the windows port.

I've carefully read several web page "guides", searched the Internet, and reviewed the posts in this group -- I just can't get SLIME to work! I'm about 12 hours into trying and not making any progress.

The only way is to use Lispbox (http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/) which works fine, but I've heard this is an unsupported project which concerns me. So I thought CLISP would be a better approach for the long term.

As to getting SLIME working with CLISP 2.48 I've tried everything, multiple approaches, conflicting approachs, logical and illogical approaches, with and without quicklisp, with EMACS and XEmacs, different LISP versions. NOTHING seems to work!!!

Is there any "fool proof" (I must be the fool) guide to accomplishing this that actually works end-to-end? I'm about to throw in the towel and never use SLIME again on Windows. Why isn't there a simple installer -- argh!!!

Thanks, Kelly

Jean-Claude Beaudoin

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Jul 20, 2012, 1:40:07 AM7/20/12
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Kelly Miller wrote:

> The only way is to use Lispbox (http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/) which works fine, but I've heard this is an unsupported project which concerns me. So I thought CLISP would be a better approach for the long term.
>

What do you mean "unsupported"? What you have usually at the core of lispbox
is CCL, one of the best supported, most mature, lisp implementation
anywhere, at least on the open-source side (commercial ones may
have better paid-for support, but no access to their source).

Ok, the current lispbox packages use CCL 1.6 which lags a bit behind
the current CCL, (at 1.8), but I don't think its that dramatic. And it
should be fairly easy to update the CCL version to the latest and
greatest once you get somewhat familiar with the lispbox setup
which looks pretty vanilla from what I have seen.

Anyway, I have watched the download statistics of lispbox for the
past year on common-lisp.net (same host as my projects) and I can
tell you that lispbox has maintained an average of above 20 000
downloads per week for the entire year! And that is for the Windows
version alone (which runs usually between 90% and 95% of the total
of all versions). Do the math, 20K times 52 weeks does in excess
of 1 million downloads. If there is nobody to maintain such
a failure then there is a real problem with the Common Lisp
community!

Cheers,

Jean-Claude Beaudoin

P.S.: I could always plug-in my stuff (MKCL) but that would be self-serving. ;-)

Jeff Barnett

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Jul 20, 2012, 3:05:14 AM7/20/12
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Sorry, I think you have done the original poster badly. First, you did
not quote his original - you wacked off 80% and became critical of the
remainder you chose. Then your response more or less said he was right.
You told him if he wanted the latest version to go do it himself. That
doesn't sound like support to me.

Second you told him many other people were successful where he has
failed. He asked for help, not statistics. He already knew he failed.
That was why he was writing. He has read several articles and spent
time. He asked a very sensible question: is there a well-described
end-to-end process or an installer program.

Since you seem to be on top of this, why don't you write out such a
process? I'm sure thousands who have been to meek to publicly ask for
help would appreciate it. Installing emacs, slime, and the like is a
nightmare for many people.

Example, Franz Lisp tailors emacs and slime for use with their Lisp
product. I once asked them how to setup printing from the emacs window
since I could find no reasonable examples or explanations in the
documentation. It took a week to find out that NONE of the Franz support
folks know how to do it. Finally, a friend sent me a few lines for my
.emacs file that worked. Did he figure it out from the documentation?
Hell no. Someone gave it to him just like he gave it to me.

If you can help the original poster, I urge you to do so. If you can't,
stay in the background so someone else can without entering a thread you
have contaminated with hostility.

Jeff Barnett

Matus Kmit

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Jul 20, 2012, 2:49:27 AM7/20/12
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On Friday, July 20, 2012 6:48:04 AM UTC+2, Kelly Miller wrote:
> Please forgive me for posting what might be a very common request for help, and please let me know if this is this is the wrong newsgroup for doing so. And yes, I'm sure this works great on LINUX and my issues are with the quality of the windows port.
>
> I've carefully read several web page "guides", searched the Internet, and reviewed the posts in this group -- I just can't get SLIME to work! I'm about 12 hours into trying and not making any progress.
>
> The only way is to use Lispbox (http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/) which works fine, but I've heard this is an unsupported project which concerns me. So I thought CLISP would be a better approach for the long term.
>
> As to getting SLIME working with CLISP 2.48 I've tried everything, multiple approaches, conflicting approachs, logical and illogical approaches, with and without quicklisp, with EMACS and XEmacs, different LISP versions. NOTHING seems to work!!!
>
> Is there any "fool proof" (I must be the fool) guide to accomplishing this that actually works end-to-end? I'm about to throw in the towel and never use SLIME again on Windows. Why isn't there a simple installer -- argh!!!
>
> Thanks, Kelly

Try http://lispcabinet.sourceforge.net/. It seems to be supported - latest version from 26 May 2012. It contains many lisp implementations and also scheme and clojure. I haven't tried it excessively, but it seems to work out of the box.

Good luck!

Zach Beane

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Jul 20, 2012, 8:07:59 AM7/20/12
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Kelly Miller <fkelly...@gmail.com> writes:

> Please forgive me for posting what might be a very common request for
> help, and please let me know if this is this is the wrong newsgroup
> for doing so. And yes, I'm sure this works great on LINUX and my
> issues are with the quality of the windows port.
>
> I've carefully read several web page "guides", searched the Internet,
> and reviewed the posts in this group -- I just can't get SLIME to
> work! I'm about 12 hours into trying and not making any progress.

http://mohiji.nfshost.com/2011/01/modern-common-lisp-on-windows/ has
worked fine for me.

Good luck,
Zach

ccc31807

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Jul 20, 2012, 10:37:18 AM7/20/12
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On Jul 20, 12:48 am, Kelly Miller <fkellymil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've carefully read several web page "guides", searched the Internet, and reviewed the posts in this group -- I just can't get SLIME to work!  I'm about 12 hours into trying and not making any progress.
...
> As to getting SLIME working with CLISP 2.48 I've tried everything, multiple approaches, conflicting approachs, logical and illogical approaches, with and without quicklisp, with EMACS and XEmacs, different LISP versions.  NOTHING seems to work!!!

Kelly,

It took me about four years to get SLIME to work on Windows. When I
figured it out (which I did eventually) I found that EMACS and I did
not get along, so I quietly divorced her.

I can think of about five different development environments off-hand.
People tend to have vicious flame wars over this issue. EMACS might be
the most popular CL environment, but there's plenty of dissent. I can
tell you want works for me, as a CL amateur. If I were a professional
Lisp developer, there's a good chance I would use EMACS, or Allegro,
or LispWorks, or maybe Corman, but I'm not a professional CL
developer.

I have found that vi (VIM) and the shell work best for me. This is
particularly true for CL, which has awesome tools built into the
language (trace, dribble, step, disassemble, time, and so on).

I might add that have a full time IT job as a Database Manager, use
Perl, Java, SQLite, PostgreSQL, LaTeX, and similar tools, and that the
shell-VIM combination works well for all these technologies, so
essentially I'm bending CL to fit in with the way I work, rather than
bending myself to fit in with the way CL works.

Before you devote substantial time to EMACS/SLIME, I recommend that
you give a lot of thought to whether EMACS will work for you.

CC.

Kelly Miller

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Jul 20, 2012, 11:55:54 AM7/20/12
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On Friday, July 20, 2012 12:48:04 AM UTC-4, Kelly Miller wrote:
> Please forgive me for posting what might be a very common request for help, and please let me know if this is this is the wrong newsgroup for doing so. And yes, I&#39;m sure this works great on LINUX and my issues are with the quality of the windows port.
>
> I&#39;ve carefully read several web page &quot;guides&quot;, searched the Internet, and reviewed the posts in this group -- I just can&#39;t get SLIME to work! I&#39;m about 12 hours into trying and not making any progress.
>
> The only way is to use Lispbox (http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/) which works fine, but I&#39;ve heard this is an unsupported project which concerns me. So I thought CLISP would be a better approach for the long term.
>
> As to getting SLIME working with CLISP 2.48 I&#39;ve tried everything, multiple approaches, conflicting approachs, logical and illogical approaches, with and without quicklisp, with EMACS and XEmacs, different LISP versions. NOTHING seems to work!!!
>
> Is there any &quot;fool proof&quot; (I must be the fool) guide to accomplishing this that actually works end-to-end? I&#39;m about to throw in the towel and never use SLIME again on Windows. Why isn&#39;t there a simple installer -- argh!!!
>
> Thanks, Kelly

Lisp Cabinet did a network install and I was up and working in minutes. Thank you!! As to lispbox being "unsupported" I apologize as now see I am wrong, I misunderstood this webpage: http://gigamonkeys.com/lispbox/ in my scurrying back and forth. I'm glad to hear it is well supported. Here are my recommendations for anyone using "Lisp Cabinet":
1. If you have installed and partially installed a number of other LISP environments trying to get SLIME working that you do not intend to use at this time then remove them, especially stray ".emacs" and ".xemacs" files that are now not right.
2. Clean up any MS Windows environmental variables you may have set "HOME", "PATH" additions etc. from the old packages. I reset "HOME" to where "Lisp Cabinet" seem to lead me to: "C:\Users\Kelly\My Documents\LispCabinetHome".
3. Makes sure to expand the selection "checkmarks" when installing Lisp Cabinet to select the LISP environments you want and not accidentally install any you don't need. I had to install a second time because I didn't.
4. You will be able to use "quicklisp" inside SLIME later to add any packages you need. This is awesome good.
5. To launch SLIME, start the included EMACS editor and select the "((" icon then "launch". You will see the name of your selected LISP (mine was "CLISP" or you may have multiple). Once you launch your LISP engine SLIME will magically come to life and become the REPL working environment (best I understand this) for you to interface with LISP. From here you can follow the books you are leaning LISP from become proficient with the language and programming.

Thank you everyone for your help, Kelly

Kelly Miller

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Oct 3, 2012, 10:38:36 AM10/3/12
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On Friday, July 20, 2012 12:48:04 AM UTC-4, Kelly Miller wrote:
EPILOGUE: I'm happy to have gotten LISP Cabinet at Sourceforge as it got my environment setup for me quickly and easily. I use "vi" ever day at work, and in the end "emacs", for all its power, was way too foreign for me to learn. I work in "vim" in MS Windows or LINUX, and use the Common LISP REPL console or the SBCL console (seems more robust with window sizing). To the gentleman who suggested this approach -- you were right -- and likely this is the route for many other newbies such as myself.
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