Common Lisp apps in Fedora

[Alexander Kahl]

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Hi David,

On 01/06/2010 06:34 PM, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> 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).
this is identical to my experience.

> 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. (...)
Definitely - but I'd rather see CL as a compiled language that permits
the equivalent of static linking only (worst drawback) so the resulting
binaries are huge since they contain every dependency including the
actual lisp machine itself. This could in fact be the weakest point
arguments could attack; I don't see an obvious solution here either as
FASL is the closest it can get to prepare a freshly started lisp machine
up to the desired state but that still requires dependency resolution,
lots of memory, disk activity and cpu cycles etc.
The only known alternative to me is gcl and ecl using C as intermediate
language for compilation but gcl lacks even basic threading and ecl
doesn't provide some POSIX related standard featured expected from
compiled languages either.

So the question remains whether Fedora devs and users would tolerate big
CL app binaries.

> Alexander Kahl:
>> Are you (or is anyone else here) interested in founding a Common Lisp SIG?
> 
> I'm interested.
Is there a standardized process for founding SIGs? Or just add some wiki
pages, set up a mailing list and spread some propaganda so folks will join?

- - Alex
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