All my other articles are predicated on a minimal, popular setup that has a clearly drawable history from the 60s until now. I think that Rob Pike complaining about how popular it was in 2000 and Strandh in 2008 show itâs popular. For a current reference, look at my friend Sachaâs body of work and conference. Stuff that is popular, was popular 10 and 20 years ago and also 50 years ago does not go away overnight. Normally the person telling you itâs not used anymore is trying to sell you something to use instead.
Our purpose here is we need several of the major lisp interpreters/compilers (they are different enough to all be needed), and we will get emacs with slime âsuperior lisp interaction mode for emacsâ and eev âI forgot what eev stands forâ. slime makes lisp be like lispâs always been like, and eev makes emacs easy to control for certain meanings of the word easy and certain meanings of the word control.
On anything like a normal computer, you just do this:
doas pkg_add ecl clisp sbcl git emacs
on a BSD where doas is like entering an admin password to install programs for every user of the computer.
On debian, the equivalent would be
sudo apt install -y ecl clisp sbcl git emacs
if you donât know how to do some version of exactly this for your personal computer, reach out to me or just howl into the void on the Mastodon and you will receive plentiful and enthusiastic help.
These were Embeddable common lisp, GNU C lisp, Steel bank common lisp, git (some thing by the linux guy) and emacs which is an incarnation of the One True Editor.
I guess this is the scary step.
M-x package-list <ret> = "alt+x (release alt+x) package-list <press enter>"C-s <space>eev <ret> = "control+s (release control+s) (press space)eev <press enter>"i (for install) then x for executeweâre halfway there. Do your computerâs variation on the following. Same advice rule as above.
You might want to install slime differently. Check out https://slime.common-lisp.dev/doc/html/ which is a very useable web document.
mkdir ~/common-lisp/
cd ~/common-lisp/
git clone https://github.com/slime/slime
mkdir ~/.emacs.d/
cd ~/.emacs.d/
ln -s ~/common-lisp/slime
Press C-x C-f ~/.emacs/init.el = Hold down control, tap x, tap f, release control, write ~/emacs/init.el and press enter
add these at the top:
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/slime/")
(require 'slime-autoloads)
(require 'eev-load)
(eev-mode 1)
Okay, we did it.
You should definitely pick up and get to know the other lisp compilers I didnât mention as well. gcl, ccl, sicl and abcl spring to mind. Note sbclâs parent was the well-known cmucl (Carnegie Melon University Common Lisp python compiler).
At this point, you too are part of the lisp community. Welcome aboard.
See you on the Mastodon, where I look forward to you howling for help.
screwlisp proposes kittens