Setting up Emacs for CL on Windows
Bill Clementson
an Emacs Common Lisp development environment on a Microsoft Windows PC. The
chapter lays out step-by-step instructions for installing all the necessary
components for each of the following CL/environment combinations:
CLISP/ILISP
ACL/ELI
Corman/eshell
LispWorks/ILISP (still to come)
The purpose of the chapter is to allow a Lisp neophyte to setup a number of
different CL implementations & Lisp development "combinations" on Windows along
with some convenience utilities (hyperspec/cltl2) and keybindings that a person
familiar with Windows applications would be comfortable with. I have tried to
make the instructions simple yet complete. A sample .emacs file that allows the
user to toggle between implementations is also provided.
The page is located at:
http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/windows.html
I would appreciate any suggestions as to how the page might be improved.
--
Bill Clementson
Marco Antoniotti
Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
> I have today uploaded a chapter to the Common Lisp Cookbook on how to set up
> an Emacs Common Lisp development environment on a Microsoft Windows PC. The
> chapter lays out step-by-step instructions for installing all the necessary
> components for each of the following CL/environment combinations:
>
> CLISP/ILISP
> ACL/ELI
> Corman/eshell
> LispWorks/ILISP (still to come)
I do not use Windows on a regular basis, so I do not personally know
what is exactly involved into it. However, writing a `dialect'
definition for Corman/ILISP should not be all that difficult.
The ILISP mailing lists are the right place where to discuss these
things.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
"Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.
Kenny Tilton
code of mine to LW and Corman and MCL was pretty frustrating because of
the diff IDEs. If I am going to keep this cross-platform stuff up I
gather all-Emacs-all-the-time would help a lot.
kt
Bill Clementson wrote:
>
> I have today uploaded a chapter to the Common Lisp Cookbook on how to set up
> an Emacs Common Lisp development environment on a Microsoft Windows PC....
Holger Schauer
> Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
> The ILISP mailing lists are the right place where to discuss these
> things.
Are they still up? Where? ilisp.cons.org seems gone.
I'm experiencing trouble with package name lookups in recent XEmacs.
Holger, Fup2: poster
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-- Frankie Goes To Hollywood, "Two tribes"
Thomas F. Burdick
> The purpose of the chapter is to allow a Lisp neophyte to setup a number of
> different CL implementations & Lisp development "combinations" on Windows along
> with some convenience utilities (hyperspec/cltl2) and keybindings that a person
> familiar with Windows applications would be comfortable with. I have tried to
> make the instructions simple yet complete. A sample .emacs file that allows the
> user to toggle between implementations is also provided.
Oh, wonderful! I no longer have to say "well, if you installed
Debian, I could show you how to do it..."
--
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Sam Steingold
> * On the subject of "Setting up Emacs for CL on Windows"
> * Sent on Wed, 20 Feb 2002 04:39:55 GMT
> * Honorable Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
>
> CLISP/ILISP
> I would appreciate any suggestions as to how the page might be improved.
1. please do not suggest that users modify internal variables, such as
`system::*source-file-types*' (btw, it already has ".lisp" in it).
2. you are suggesting that the users install CLISP in
"c:\Program Files\clisp-2.27"
and then copy some files elsewhere. please do not do that.
you did not list _all_ files that must be copied, so your
instructions result in a broken CLISP (and don't tell me that it
works for you - I know it works for you, otherwise you would not have
recommended this to others; it just means that there are things you
did not try yet). your "bat" file is broken too.
CLISP comes with "install.lisp" which creates the right bat file on
your desktop.
3. please do not use links to specific versions of CLISP. are you sure
you will be updating your pages immediately every time you a new
version of CLISP is released?
great project - I will add a link to it to the CLISP homepage.
--
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running RedHat7.2 GNU/Linux
Keep Jerusalem united! <http://www.onejerusalem.org/Petition.asp>
Read, think and remember! <http://www.iris.org.il> <http://www.memri.org/>
NY survival guide: when crossing a street, mind cars, not streetlights.
Sam Steingold
> * On the subject of "Setting up Emacs for CL on Windows"
> * Sent on Wed, 20 Feb 2002 04:39:55 GMT
> * Honorable Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
>
> CLISP/ILISP
1. please do not suggest that users modify internal variables, such as
Bill Clementson
> Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
>
> > I have today uploaded a chapter to the Common Lisp Cookbook on how to set up
> > an Emacs Common Lisp development environment on a Microsoft Windows PC. The
> > chapter lays out step-by-step instructions for installing all the necessary
> > components for each of the following CL/environment combinations:
> >
> > CLISP/ILISP
> > ACL/ELI
> > Corman/eshell
> > LispWorks/ILISP (still to come)
>
> I do not use Windows on a regular basis, so I do not personally know
> what is exactly involved into it. However, writing a `dialect'
> definition for Corman/ILISP should not be all that difficult.
>
> The ILISP mailing lists are the right place where to discuss these
> things.
My intention was to provide setup instructions for a number of different development
environments under Windows. There are alternatives that people might choose to
use but I wasn't prepared to provide all possible alternatives, just enough so
that people could get started. However, contributions to the instructions are
most welcome :-)
As you mentioned, Corman isn't currently supported in ILISP (Reini Urban did
some work a while back but he hasn't updated his ILISP modifications for Corman
to keep them up-to-date with the current versions of ILISP/Corman. His page is at:
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/lisp/cormanlisp/
I downloaded Reini's mods a while back and got it "mostly" working; however, it
would lock up my Emacs every now and then so I wasn't comfortable suggesting it
as an option in it's current state. It would be nice if Reini (or someone)
decided to get it going and had the changes merged into the main ILISP
project.
BTW, you guys have done a terrific job maintaining and enhancing ILISP. I
really like the environment. Thanks for all your great work.
--
Bill Clementson
Bill Clementson
> Hey, great contrib. I may break down and learn Emacs now. Porting some
> code of mine to LW and Corman and MCL was pretty frustrating because of
> the diff IDEs. If I am going to keep this cross-platform stuff up I
> gather all-Emacs-all-the-time would help a lot.
Thanks. I had used many code editors in the past and thought that SlickEdit
was the best for a long time. Then I started learning Lisp and down-loaded
Emacs just because everybody was recommending it. There was a bit of a learning
curve but now I can't imagine working without it. For Java & C work, I still go
back to SlickEdit, but Emacs would be really hard to beat for Lisp work.
--
Bill Clementson
Bill Clementson
> > * In message <wk4rkcz...@attbi.com>
> > * On the subject of "Setting up Emacs for CL on Windows"
> > * Sent on Wed, 20 Feb 2002 04:39:55 GMT
> > * Honorable Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
> >
> > CLISP/ILISP
> > I would appreciate any suggestions as to how the page might be improved.
>
> 1. please do not suggest that users modify internal variables, such as
> `system::*source-file-types*' (btw, it already has ".lisp" in it).
I put the statement in the _clisprc.lisp file because I had read somewhere that
it was needed. After having grep'ed for it in the CLISP directory structure, I
can't find any mention of it. I'll remove this from the instructions.
>
> 2. you are suggesting that the users install CLISP in
> "c:\Program Files\clisp-2.27"
> and then copy some files elsewhere. please do not do that.
> you did not list _all_ files that must be copied, so your
> instructions result in a broken CLISP
But it works for me :-)
>(and don't tell me that it
> works for you - I know it works for you, otherwise you would not have
> recommended this to others;
oops
>it just means that there are things you
> did not try yet).
I'll fix the instructions so that the CLISP files are left in the installation
directory. For my own benefit, could you tell me why it isn't possible to copy
just those files? I thought that if I had the Lisp exe file and the Lisp image,
that was all that was needed for CLISP development work. What other
components of the CLISP package are required and what types of things wouldn't
have worked properly with my suggested setup? Again, I'm not questioning your
suggestion, I'm still learning and I want to understand.
> your "bat" file is broken too.
> CLISP comes with "install.lisp" which creates the right bat file on
> your desktop.
The install.bat file that is provided with CLISP failed on my Windows/2000
machine (the error was:
[pathname.d:6610]
*** - Win32 error 2 (ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND): The system cannot find the file
specified.
Press any key to continue . . .
Instead, I followed the instructions that were in the CLISP README file and my
clisp.bat was created from the instructions in that file. I really should
have reported the bug, but I forgot about it after I manually created the batch
file and it worked ok. I just had a look through the install.lisp file and I
think that I've identified where the bug is. Here is the offending code:
(let ((bat-file (merge-pathnames
"Profiles/All Users/Desktop/clisp.bat"
(concatenate 'string (getenv "windir") "/"))))
(with-open-file (bat bat-file :direction :output)
(format t "~&writing <~a>..." bat-file) (force-output)
(format bat "@echo off~%~a %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9~%" *clisp-cmd*)
(format t "done~%")))
On my Windows/2000 PC, the "All Users" profile directory is located at
"c:/Documents and Settings/All Users/". On my Windows/98 PC, the
"All Users" profile directory is located at "c:/windows/All Users/". The above
code will not work for all versions of Microsoft Windows. Instead of trying to
cater for all past and future Microsoft Windows versions, it might be easier to
have the install program just create the batch file in the CLISP installation
directory.
>
> 3. please do not use links to specific versions of CLISP. are you sure
> you will be updating your pages immediately every time you a new
> version of CLISP is released?
I deliberately used specific versions of each product as I wasn't able to
create generic instructions that worked for each product. For example:
1. ILISP needs to be the CVS version in order to work with Emacs 21.1.
2. The ACL6.1 ELI package needs to have the specific fix that I detail
in the document in order to work properly with Emacs 21.1 but will work fine
with earlier versions of Emacs.
3. The W3 link that I gave will work with Emacs 21.1 but other download sites
for W3 have versions that don't work.
4. Eshell comes standard with Emacs 21.1 but was an optional download in
earlier versions of Emacs.
Unfortunately, there are too many dependencies to just provide generic download
and installation instructions. My aim was to provide a set of instructions for
specific versions of each product so that a novice user could just follow the
instructions and be reasonably certain that the end result would be a working
system. Hopefully, this page will be kept updated as newer versions become
available. Since a lot of beginner questions center around how to get a working
development environment set up, it will be useful to have a set of instructions
that a novice can be pointed to.
> great project - I will add a link to it to the CLISP homepage.
Yes, Edi has done a great service to the Lisp community by organizing this.
Thank you for the time you spent reviewing my set of instructions and
identifying where changes needed to be made. I will make the necessary
corrections. Please let me know if you find any other areas where the document
could be improved.
--
Bill Clementson
Sam Steingold
> * On the subject of "Re: Setting up Emacs for CL on Windows"
> * Sent on Thu, 21 Feb 2002 05:28:51 GMT
> * Honorable Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
>
> What other components of the CLISP package are required and what types
> of things wouldn't have worked properly with my suggested setup?
> Again, I'm not questioning your suggestion, I'm still learning and I
> want to understand.
-B option specifies where CLISP will find files like clhs.txt and
UnicodeData.txt (needed for DESCRIBE of chars and the CLHS function),
and the other data files as we see fit in the future, e.g., on-line
docs.
when you talk about CormanLisp or ACL, you do not recommend that people
copy files out of the installation directory.
please extend that courtesy to us too.
> Sam Steingold <s...@gnu.org> writes:
> > your "bat" file is broken too.
> > CLISP comes with "install.lisp" which creates the right bat file on
> > your desktop.
>
> The install.bat file that is provided with CLISP failed on my
> Windows/2000 machine (the error was:
this bug has been fixed on 2001-08-16.
--
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running RedHat7.2 GNU/Linux
Keep Jerusalem united! <http://www.onejerusalem.org/Petition.asp>
Read, think and remember! <http://www.iris.org.il> <http://www.memri.org/>
There are 3 kinds of people: those who can count and those who cannot.
Bill Clementson
> > * Honorable Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
> >
> > What other components of the CLISP package are required and what types
> > of things wouldn't have worked properly with my suggested setup?
> > Again, I'm not questioning your suggestion, I'm still learning and I
> > want to understand.
>
> -B option specifies where CLISP will find files like clhs.txt and
> UnicodeData.txt (needed for DESCRIBE of chars and the CLHS function),
> and the other data files as we see fit in the future, e.g., on-line
> docs.
>
> when you talk about CormanLisp or ACL, you do not recommend that people
> copy files out of the installation directory.
> please extend that courtesy to us too.
For CormanLisp, I actually did recommend that people copy files out of the
installation directory as well.
The purpose of the instruction page I wrote was to show novice users how to set
up a number of working Emacs/Lisp development environments. I have found that I
prefer to have a separate working copy of the Lisp executable and the image (for
example, if I save a new image and screw something up, I always have the
"pristine" image that can be restored from the original installation
directory). However, I recognize that this might cause some problems and will
be changing the instructions (for both CLISP and Corman) so that the files are
not copied out of the installation directory.
> > Sam Steingold <s...@gnu.org> writes:
> > > your "bat" file is broken too.
> > > CLISP comes with "install.lisp" which creates the right bat file on
> > > your desktop.
> >
> > The install.bat file that is provided with CLISP failed on my
> > Windows/2000 machine (the error was:
>
> this bug has been fixed on 2001-08-16.
The install.lisp file is fixed in CVS but not in the CLISP v2.27 Windows
distribution. I will include instructions on how to download the CVS version of
install.lisp and remove the instructions on how to manually create the
clisp.bat file.
Thank you for your suggestions.
--
Bill Clementson
Reini Urban
>some work a while back but he hasn't updated his ILISP modifications for Corman
>to keep them up-to-date with the current versions of ILISP/Corman. His page is at:
>
>http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/lisp/cormanlisp/
>
>I downloaded Reini's mods a while back and got it "mostly" working; however, it
>would lock up my Emacs every now and then so I wasn't comfortable suggesting it
>as an option in it's current state. It would be nice if Reini (or someone)
>decided to get it going and had the changes merged into the main ILISP
>project.
With cygwin xemacs it got better but it's still not stable enough to be
posted to the ILISP folks.
And I had no time yet to update my patches to the latest corman release,
which fixed some things and some not. (e.g. compile-file-pathname)
--
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html
wis...@inetmi.com
> I have today uploaded a chapter to the Common Lisp Cookbook on how
> to set up an Emacs Common Lisp development environment on a
> Microsoft Windows PC.
That looks good, and I can imagine that new lisp programmers will find
it very useful.
Coincidentally I just wrote up a little bit about my emacs
configuration. You might want to look it over just for the part that
explains how to get ilisp/MCL-style arglist information in ACL.
http://lemonodor.com/archives/000043.html
John Wiseman
Bill Clementson
> Bill Clementson <bc1...@attbi.com> writes:
>
> > I have today uploaded a chapter to the Common Lisp Cookbook on how
> > to set up an Emacs Common Lisp development environment on a
> > Microsoft Windows PC.
>
> That looks good, and I can imagine that new lisp programmers will find
> it very useful.
>
> Coincidentally I just wrote up a little bit about my emacs
> configuration. You might want to look it over just for the part that
> explains how to get ilisp/MCL-style arglist information in ACL.
There are some good tips on your page. My page deals with a fairly minimal
beginner's setup for emacs and different lisp implementations. A few months
back, I asked here on c.l.l for ideas from people. I got some tips in reply
here on the list and some other ones by private email. There is probably the
need for an "Advanced Emacs Configuration Tips for CL Development" (or something
similar) chapter which could hold some of those types of tips. Would you be
interested in writing (or at least contributing to) such a chapter? If so, I
have some more advanced tips that I could contribute and I can contact the
other people who sent me tips and ask whether they would agree to having their
material published on the CL Cookbook site too.
What do other people think? Is there a need for such a chapter in the CL
Cookbook?
> http://lemonodor.com/archives/000043.html
Hey, that's a really neat lisp weblog you maintain. I hadn't seen your site
mentioned before & you have some interesting stuff on it.
--
Bill Clementson