Common Lisp apps in Fedora

[David A. Wheeler]

On 01/04/2010 05:29 PM, Jerry James wrote:
> One of the first issues we'll have to face is the use of common-lisp-controller.
> First, it postpones compilation to the first time the application is
> executed by a particular Common Lisp engine.  For the application I
> packaged, PVS [2], compilation takes a significant amount of time.
> This approach may be fine for small libraries and applications, but
> will it really scale up to the some of the big applications people
> want to package?

No.  That'd be rediculous; big CL applications can take a LONG time to compile,
and compilation usually requires lots of memory (even if the final application doesn't).

Fedora has lots of applications written in many other compiled languages
like C and C++, and they aren't distributed *only* as source code.  Instead,
people expect that when they download the binary they'll get a pre-compiled,
ready-to-go version. I think the same should be true for big Common Lisp (CL)
applications. If you want a distribution that requires you to recompile
*everything* from scratch, go to Gentoo or similar.

There should be pre-compiled versions of large CL applications, as
maxima-sbcl is right now and the upcoming pvs-sbcl will be.

Alexander Kahl:
> Are you (or is anyone else here) interested in founding a Common Lisp SIG?

I'm interested.

--- David A. Wheeler