Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1996 11:45:54 +0100 (MET) From: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> To: cracauer@cons.org (Martin Cracauer) Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Interest in large collection of Lisp/Scheme implementations? Message-ID: <199611191045.LAA25078@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> In-Reply-To: <199611190957.KAA29674@knight.cons.org> from Martin Cracauer at "Nov 19, 96 10:57:32 am"
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> I have been maintaining almost every free Lisp and Scheme system on my > NetBSD/i386 machine for several years now. > > I'm moving my work to FreeBSD and I wonder if there is interest that I > take the extra effort and make proper FreeBSD ports/packages of all > these. > > If you have an opinion, could you please drop me a note on the > following questions? Thanks! > > - Is there some interest to have such a wide collection of > Lisp-related packages on FreeBSD or do you think is a rather > pointless or would you fear FreeBSD could be seen as some kind of > "new Lisp machine"? You're thinking of the rise and fall Symbolics, right? ;-) > > - Can I rely on the commiters that updates are being brought in the main tree > quite fast? This community is quite sensitive and I need to react > fast if I made a suboptimal port. If you think the OpenBSD > discussion was a flame war, you haven't heard talking FooScheme people > talking about BarScheme's implementation. > > I noticed jmacd@FreeBSD.ORG has some ports of Scheme. If you read > this, would you please contact me? > > I'm talking about more than just compiling these packages. I plan to > make Common Lisp/Scheme libraries availiable for as many > implementations as possible. This is a very time-consuming thing to do > starting from individual sources (there's no ./configure in Scheme > :-). And using shared libraries instead of static ones where it makes > sense (the Boehm GC and some regular depression packages are used > quite often). A proper setup of elisp packages so that control to > several implementations is granted from emacs is needed. I also plan > to see how one can use FreeBSD's VM system to speed up some > implementations and promote the results. > > I think we could make FreeBSD a nice platform for fans of dynamic > languages. Just a few commands and get the full range. And FreeBSD's > VM system will make it the best platform for people with too few > memory anyway, but I fear I could be the only one interested in all > this. So please speak up if you want it (Alternativly, I could just > burn my /usr/local on a CD and send that around). > > To list a few numbers: There are about 20 standalone implementations > of Lisp-like languages (counting only interesting ones). There are > about half a dozend implementations that can be used as an extension > language library for C or C++ programs. I have no idea how many (Lisp) > libraries could be worth making a package from, but 10 at least. Some > elisp packages and C libraries are needed for support. I would like to see such a collection. When you cover 20 implementations I'm sure my favourite LISP, namely XLISP (XSCHEME) will be included. I did a couple of things with XLISP in the late 80's. I've an OPS5 engine lying around still for XLISP. Anyway, I would very much welcome you being the maintainer for a LISP / dynamic language collection for FreeBSD. > > Thanks for feedback (posistive or negative) > Martin > -- > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% > Martin Cracauer <cracauer@cons.org> http://www.cons.org/cracauer > cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (batched, preferred for large mails) > Tel.: (daytime) +4940 41478712 (sometimes hacker's daytime :-) > Tel.: (private) +4940 5221829 Fax.: (private) +4940 5228536 > Paper: (private) Waldstrasse 200, 22846 Norderstedt, Germany > --Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de
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