It appears that GNU is no longer actively supporting GCL. I have been
unable to find anything about GCL at http://www.gnu.org through their
search engine, online docs, or software download section. The FreeBSD
port is broken and I cannot compile GCL 2.2.2 from source. The few GCL
documents that do turn up using web meta-search engines are ancient.
Why did GNU drop GCL and why not post a "GCL no longer supported"
message as a courtesy to the user community?
I *did* succeed in building and installing the FreeBSD CMU Common Lisp
package which is the preferred way to install new software under
FreeBSD. It worked fine but when I ran a non-terminating recursion (a
non-tail-recursive user-defined factorial function with a negative
argument it wasn't designed to handle) it dumped core and booted me back
to the shell command prompt. I seem to recall that GCL under FreeBSD
2.2.8 was able to handle stack/numeric overflow exceptions properly.
This is all very frustrating.
TIA
Jim Driese
Jim Driese <·······@seanet.com> writes:
> It appears that GNU is no longer actively supporting GCL. I have been
> unable to find anything about GCL at http://www.gnu.org through their
> search engine, online docs, or software download section. The FreeBSD
> port is broken and I cannot compile GCL 2.2.2 from source. The few GCL
> documents that do turn up using web meta-search engines are ancient.
> Why did GNU drop GCL and why not post a "GCL no longer supported"
> message as a courtesy to the user community?
As far as I am concerned (especially when it comes to ILISP support)
development of GCL stopped *years* ago. Moving to CMUCL of CLisp is
the right thing to do.
> I *did* succeed in building and installing the FreeBSD CMU Common Lisp
> package which is the preferred way to install new software under
> FreeBSD. It worked fine but when I ran a non-terminating recursion (a
> non-tail-recursive user-defined factorial function with a negative
> argument it wasn't designed to handle) it dumped core and booted me back
> to the shell command prompt. I seem to recall that GCL under FreeBSD
> 2.2.8 was able to handle stack/numeric overflow exceptions properly.
> This is all very frustrating.
This may one for ··········@cons.org. Post it there with a
description of the problem.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
From: Fernando D. Mato Mira
Subject: Re: What happened to GCL -- Gnu Common Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <38145689.AA0B9C0@iname.com>
Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> As far as I am concerned (especially when it comes to ILISP support)
> development of GCL stopped *years* ago. Moving to CMUCL of CLisp is
> the right thing to do.
You mean GCL, or AKCL? I have the impression the FSF never touched GCL much.
And that's OK. A real GCL should be a front end for GCC (and a less C-centric
GCC wouldn't hurt, either).
--
((( DANGER )) LISP BIGOT (( DANGER )) LISP BIGOT (( DANGER )))
Fernando D. Mato Mira
Real-Time SW Eng & Networking
Advanced Systems Engineering Division
CSEM
Jaquet-Droz 1 email: matomira AT acm DOT org
CH-2007 Neuchatel tel: +41 (32) 720-5157
Switzerland FAX: +41 (32) 720-5720
www.csem.ch www.vrai.com ligwww.epfl.ch/matomira.html
"Fernando D. Mato Mira" <········@iname.com> writes:
> Marco Antoniotti wrote:
>
> > As far as I am concerned (especially when it comes to ILISP support)
> > development of GCL stopped *years* ago. Moving to CMUCL of CLisp is
> > the right thing to do.
>
> You mean GCL, or AKCL? I have the impression the FSF never touched GCL much.
> And that's OK. A real GCL should be a front end for GCC (and a less C-centric
> GCC wouldn't hurt, either).
>
GCL is born AKCL. AKCL stopped when the beast became GCL. The family tree
is the following
KCL
|
+--> AKCL --> GCL
|
+--> Ibuki CL
|
+--> Delphi CL --> ECoLisp (maybe not quite here)
There may be other developments I might be unaware of.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
From: Fernando D. Mato Mira
Subject: Re: What happened to GCL -- Gnu Common Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <38149FFA.41EC4BB6@iname.com>
Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> "Fernando D. Mato Mira" <········@iname.com> writes:
>
> > Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> >
> > > As far as I am concerned (especially when it comes to ILISP support)
> > > development of GCL stopped *years* ago. Moving to CMUCL of CLisp is
> > > the right thing to do.
> >
> > You mean GCL, or AKCL? I have the impression the FSF never touched GCL much.
>
> GCL is born AKCL. AKCL stopped when the beast became GCL. The family tree
> is the following
>
> KCL
> |
> +--> AKCL --> GCL
Hence my question. From my perspective, the FSF rescued an emerging zombie, but it
always kept a pretty much undead status.
[And regarding writing a CL frontend to GCC: yes, some other people have taken a
look at it, and it's not a trivial thing. Someone mentioned
to me some months ago some `secret' project to make a next generation compiler
able to integrate many different languages. That' would be the way to go, if
that's anything more than vaporware. There were no Lispers involved (but who wants
to get into some compiler project if it's not done in Lisp? :-( )]
> --
> ((( DANGER )) LISP BIGOT (( DANGER )) LISP BIGOT (( DANGER )))
>
> Fernando D. Mato Mira
> Real-Time SW Eng & Networking
> Advanced Systems Engineering Division
> CSEM
> Jaquet-Droz 1 email: matomira AT acm DOT org
> CH-2007 Neuchatel tel: +41 (32) 720-5157
> Switzerland FAX: +41 (32) 720-5720
>
> www.csem.ch www.vrai.com ligwww.epfl.ch/matomira.html
>
Jim Driese (·······@seanet.com) wrote in ·················@seanet.com on
25.10.1999 7:53 Uhr:
> It appears that GNU is no longer actively supporting GCL. I have been
> unable to find anything about GCL at http://www.gnu.org through their
> search engine, online docs, or software download section. The FreeBSD
> port is broken and I cannot compile GCL 2.2.2 from source. The few GCL
> documents that do turn up using web meta-search engines are ancient.
> Why did GNU drop GCL and why not post a "GCL no longer supported"
> message as a courtesy to the user community?
It has been in this sorry state for a long time now. It's also far from
being ANSI compliant, so you probably wouldn't want to use it anyway.
> I *did* succeed in building and installing the FreeBSD CMU Common Lisp
> package which is the preferred way to install new software under
> FreeBSD. It worked fine but when I ran a non-terminating recursion (a
> non-tail-recursive user-defined factorial function with a negative
> argument it wasn't designed to handle) it dumped core and booted me back
> to the shell command prompt. I seem to recall that GCL under FreeBSD
> 2.2.8 was able to handle stack/numeric overflow exceptions properly.
> This is all very frustrating.
You have two other options on FreeBSD:
clisp (http://clisp.cons.org) and
Allegro Common Lisp trial edition (ftp://ftp.franz.com/pub/acl501trial
(maybe the last directory name is wrong))
The first is GPL, the second is free for non-commercial purposes.
Yours,
Clemens
--
Clemens Heitzinger
http://ag.or.at:8000/~clemens (Lisp related material)
Clemens Heitzinger <········@ag.or.at> writes:
> It has been in this sorry state for a long time now. It's also far from
> being ANSI compliant, so you probably wouldn't want to use it anyway.
I use GCL pretty much every day, on Suns and in FreeBSD, and I do not
agree that people should necessarily give up on it and use other
things. It's not too hard to add a few things that make it close
enough to ANSI-compliant that I can use the same code in GCL and
Allegro.
I have not had trouble recompiling it from source.
However, the people who do FreeBSD do change things from time to time
in ways that make life difficult for systems such as GCL. The recent
move to ELF from AOUT really messed up C-code loading, for instance;
and some change in signal-handling messed up other things.
My feeling is that, at the end of the day, I can always try to fix
GCL myself, becuase it's reasonably straightforward C code and not
too huge. I wouldn't care to try fixing CMU CL; and for Allegro
I would not, of course, have the source code in the first place.
I don't know enough about clisp to comment on it.
-- jeff
>>>>> "JD" == Jim Driese <·······@seanet.com> writes:
JD> It appears that GNU is no longer actively supporting GCL.
I spoke with Bill Schelter(sp?) about nine months ago. As far as I
know, he's still working on it (and accepting patches *hint hint*).
Right now it follows CLtL1, and he wants to have it conform to ANSI
and possibly CLtL2.
And to the other fellow who suggested it: Integrating GCL into GCC is
a really, really big project. I looked into it at the beginning of
the year. GCC itself (just the C part) is huge, and the interface to
the code generator is poorly documented. I spent about three months
chasing through the source code before giving up and downloading CLisp
and CMU CL.
Maybe when GJC gets along further and GUILE stabilizes there will be
more interest in a Lisp(-family) front-end to GCC.
--
"I try to take life one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me
at once." -- Carrie Fish
Matthew Economou <········@irtnog.org> writes:
> >>>>> "JD" == Jim Driese <·······@seanet.com> writes:
>
> JD> It appears that GNU is no longer actively supporting GCL.
>
> I spoke with Bill Schelter(sp?) about nine months ago. As far as I
> know, he's still working on it (and accepting patches *hint hint*).
> Right now it follows CLtL1, and he wants to have it conform to ANSI
> and possibly CLtL2.
Oh Yeah?!? He could start to include DEFPACKAGE and LOOP in the
distribution. There are perfectly working versions of these packages
for GCL around. AFAIK (I will be happy to be proven wrong) they have
never been included in GCL.
> And to the other fellow who suggested it: Integrating GCL into GCC is
> a really, really big project. I looked into it at the beginning of
> the year. GCC itself (just the C part) is huge, and the interface to
> the code generator is poorly documented. I spent about three months
> chasing through the source code before giving up and downloading CLisp
> and CMU CL.
>
> Maybe when GJC gets along further and GUILE stabilizes there will be
> more interest in a Lisp(-family) front-end to GCC.
What is GJC?
(with-sarcasm-on "Guile stabilizes? :)" )
(with-more-sarcasm-on "Guile becomes a Common Lisp? :)" )
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
On 25 Oct 1999 16:51:16 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
<·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote:
>Matthew Economou <········@irtnog.org> writes:
>> And to the other fellow who suggested it: Integrating GCL into GCC is
>> a really, really big project. I looked into it at the beginning of
>> the year. GCC itself (just the C part) is huge, and the interface to
>> the code generator is poorly documented. I spent about three months
>> chasing through the source code before giving up and downloading CLisp
>> and CMU CL.
>>
>> Maybe when GJC gets along further and GUILE stabilizes there will be
>> more interest in a Lisp(-family) front-end to GCC.
>
>What is GJC?
This is the "GNU Compiler for Java."
<http://sourceware.cygnus.com/java/>
Largely due to the work of the folks at Cygnus; this is a quite
interesting package that has the ability to do the three main code
transformations that are of interest:
a) Java sources to Java bytecode,
b) Java sources to native machine code, and
c) Java bytecode to native machine code.
It would indeed be very interesting to see some more direct
Lisp-related front end for GCC.
>(with-sarcasm-on "Guile stabilizes? :)" )
>(with-more-sarcasm-on "Guile becomes a Common Lisp? :)" )
It's quite unfortunate that both of these things are fair comment...
--
A Linux machine! because a 486 is a terrible thing to waste!
-- <···@wintermute.ucr.edu> Joe Sloan
········@hex.net- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
········@news.hex.net (Christopher Browne) writes:
> On 25 Oct 1999 16:51:16 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
> <·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> wrote:
> >Matthew Economou <········@irtnog.org> writes:
> >> Maybe when GJC gets along further and GUILE stabilizes there will be
> >> more interest in a Lisp(-family) front-end to GCC.
> >
> >What is GJC?
>
> This is the "GNU Compiler for Java."
> <http://sourceware.cygnus.com/java/>
>
> Largely due to the work of the folks at Cygnus; this is a quite
> interesting package that has the ability to do the three main code
> transformations that are of interest:
> a) Java sources to Java bytecode,
> b) Java sources to native machine code, and
> c) Java bytecode to native machine code.
Yep. I have looked at it. It doesn't do 1.1 yet; i.e. it does not do
closures (read: inner, maybe anonymous, classes :) ). Not a pretty
thing. I am doing some serious Java work and I would love to have GJC
working. Unfortunately I cannot spend time to enhance it.
> It would indeed be very interesting to see some more direct
> Lisp-related front end for GCC.
>
> >(with-sarcasm-on "Guile stabilizes? :)" )
> >(with-more-sarcasm-on "Guile becomes a Common Lisp? :)" )
>
> It's quite unfortunate that both of these things are fair comment...
Which shows that the original idea of "doing something simpler than
CL" and more "Scheme like" was not a very good one.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
From: Robert Monfera
Subject: Re: What happened to GCL -- Gnu Common Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <38147247.560A1ACF@fisec.com>
Matthew Economou wrote:
...
> Right now it follows CLtL1, and he wants to have it conform to ANSI
> and possibly CLtL2.
Does it mean that Bill wants to put in CLtL2 pieces that were not
included in the standard, or that after he brought it to ANSI
conformance, he will downgrade it to CLtL2? (Both options would be
somewhat surprising.)
Robert
>>>>> "RM" == Robert Monfera <·······@fisec.com> writes:
RM> Does it mean that Bill wants to put in CLtL2 pieces that were
RM> not included in the standard, or that after he brought it to
RM> ANSI conformance, he will downgrade it to CLtL2? (Both
RM> options would be somewhat surprising.)
I am under the impression that there are useful things in CLtL2 that
weren't included in the spec. I may have been mistaken---the last
I spoke with Bill was about 9 months ago, and I deleted the actual
messages out of my inbox about a month or two ago.
--
"My mind is like a steel trap - rusty and illegal in 37 states." -- Carrie Fish
From: Marc Mertens
Subject: Re: What happened to GCL -- Gnu Common Lisp
Date:
Message-ID: <38173988.F79B404E@akam.be>
Jim Driese wrote:
> It appears that GNU is no longer actively supporting GCL. I have been
> unable to find anything about GCL at http://www.gnu.org through their
> search engine, online docs, or software download section. Jim Driese
Look at ftp://ftp.ma.utexas.edu/pub/gcl/ , and you will find some beta
versions
for gcl-2.3 (from august this year) . So I think GCL is still maintained.
Hopes this helps.
Marc Mertens
········@akam.be