[CM] which lisp/scheme for future use?

[Rick Taube]

>I'm wondering about which LISP system to install in the long run. We

I don't think there is (or possibly ever will be) one free lisp that does 
everything. So on Linux I would install guile, cmucl and clisp and let
people use whatever they want. If I had OSX then I would definately
install Guile and OpenMCL and I would throw away clisp and cmucl.

As far as CM goes, the next version will work the same in Guile and
CLTL. Sources for CM are now in Scheme but I have written a 
scheme->cltl translator that moves the code to cltl automatically.
This is now working so I'm within a week or two of the next release.
As far as teaching CM goes, I would/will definately teach in Scheme.
The next version of CM has an optional "scheme.lisp" file that you
can load into a CLTL image to have access to most of Scheme.

>Privately I'm using clisp but it seems that
>ayou're not very happy with it due to the lack of a proper foreign

CLISP is impossible to debug and its still missing a working LOOP 
and parts of CLOS. The new CM uses metaclasses so I dont know if
I can even run in CLISP anymore. Anyway Guile now runs on both
Linux and Windows (cygwin) so its a resonable alternative to CLISP
for Intel machines.

[...]
>I gave CMUcl a try yesterday
>but got tons of errors trying to compile the lisp image (after 11000
>lines of output).

You can get a prebuilt version of cmucl. Check their site or planetccrma.
When i last looked (several years ago) it seemed that building cmucl from
scratch was a huge project and required someone with the chops of 
Nando at ccrma to do it.

>it seems to me that Rick is mainly using
>Macintoshes and Bill seems to favor ACL there should be an alternative
>on the Linux Platform. What about guile?

This was certainly true in the past but isn't anymore. If I had any
money to buy a machine today I'd probably go with Intel/Linux. 
It would be a tough decision though, so I guess its a good thing that I'm
broke and don't have to decide.

>I would participate in trying to make a joint effort to establish some
>documentation for a Unix based setup including emacs and some
>interpreter. I didn't look into the Planet CCRMA distro that much as

At some point soon CM will need a "./configure" and "make install"
and I dont know how to do either!
I need an install process so CM doesnt have to autoload eveything
and keep track of its directories. The idea is that after doing a
./configure and make there would be a "cm" command that starts up
CM in a dedicated Listener window inside Xemacs with a Help menu
and everything, just like in MCL now.  I have a good start on the
Xemacs Listener (its in the file "listener.el" in the scm.tar
tarball at CCRMA). With a little work it could be close to
working in MCL.

>It would be great if some distant day from now the whole procedure of
>getting Common (Lisp) Music and friends to work (including Realtime,
>aPlotter and MIDI) is as simple on the Linux Platform as it is on the
>Mac right now.

This is my hope, too!