Corman Lisp development environment for MS Windows | Hacker News Reader

Corman Lisp development environment for MS Windows

github.com

62 pointseggy11 comments

I am using it for fun, and to create little Windows executables for work. I have SBCL, emacs, and slime, but Corman is such a neat little development environment for Windows. I recommend it to friends wanting to play with Lisp. I especially like tweaking the minesweepers demo, and letting it run while I do other stuff.

CCL also supports windows: https://ccl.clozure.com/ That's my choice for lisp development. It is supported by many libraries.

Other alternatives: https://ecl.common-lisp.dev/, https://armedbear.common-lisp.dev/, https://franz.com/products/allegro-common-lisp/, http://www.lispworks.com/

I've tried them all. I use SBCL with emacs and slime at the moment, but Corman Lisp is a simple MSI installer with cool demos and a nicely integrated environment. I am sorry, but even though I have used emacs for many years, getting a friend to load Corman Lisp and start playing and learning is much quicker and smoother. I am not saying to use it for general CL development. Fun, learning, and play.

Oh nice, I'm mentioned. But all the praise should go to the current maintainer Artem Boldariev. It's a wonderful lisp, but Windows only.

HNers may also enjoy Roger Coman's talk on the history of his relationship with Lisp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdf89uLcLNk

I didn't try Corman Lisp (I will), but it should be noted that sbcl works just fine in windows, despite a warning it used to carry about it being unstable. The difficulty of developing in windows, in my experience, has more to do with external things like ssl or sqlite, that may not be present in the system or may not be installed in the way that's expected by a lisp library, which wasn't as tested under windows.

are x64 threads finally fully working?!

What do you mean by 'fully'? I mean, with a lot of hard work, sweat, and cursing that comes with making any large game, not to mention a game engine and various support infrastructure too, there's at least one existence proof that they're at least 'working': https://kandria.com/ (How much cursing has been done at Windows vs SBCL vs OpenGL vs various libraries, only Shinmera knows. You might like a recent overview he wrote up of some of the development: https://reader.tymoon.eu/article/413 When things work well enough that "build with wine" is a viable strategy, that's pretty well in my book.)

A quick scan of the git page revealed references to Windows 2000, NT and XP (SP3 even!) but I didn't see mention of even Vista, nor anything newer.

A slightly longer look revealed an email from 2013 which seemed to speculate about the level of effort required to move to 64 bit support. So .. probably the short answer here is 'no'.

AFAIK, yes: https://www.sbcl.org/manual/index.html#Threading

You just gave me hope it's alive again – alas!

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