Hi there,
I've been looking at GCL, GNU Common Lisp. The promise of this system is
the large number of platforms/architectures on which it runs, including
Windows. However, according to their documentation the system was
"originally designed to meet the CLtL1 standard" and only recently have
they aimed for ansi compatibility.
Does anyone have experience with this? How is the quality of the system,
as opposed to cmucl and sbcl? How is it's ansi compatibility? ("good
enough" is good enough for me)
Regards,
Iwan van der Kleyn
Iwan van der Kleyn wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I've been looking at GCL, GNU Common Lisp. The promise of this system is
> the large number of platforms/architectures on which it runs, including
> Windows. However, according to their documentation the system was
> "originally designed to meet the CLtL1 standard" and only recently have
> they aimed for ansi compatibility.
>
> Does anyone have experience with this? How is the quality of the system,
> as opposed to cmucl and sbcl? How is it's ansi compatibility? ("good
> enough" is good enough for me)
Camm Maguire, the lead maintainer/developer, posts to this group, so
maybe he'll send you a detailed response.
I think it's been improving steadily, but is still not as compliant
as cmucl/sbcl (which have also been improving steadily). Be sure to
build gcl with --enable-ansi in the configuration, or to use the right
binary in a Debian distribution (IIRC, the default is the CLtL1 build.)
The gcl compiler has (over the past year) reached a state of stability
as indicated by the lack of failures on exposure to the gcl random
test generator. Neither sbcl nor cmucl can yet claim this, although
the importance of the remaining bugs in those is debatable.
Paul
From: Edi Weitz
Subject: Re: Quality and ANSI compatibility of GCL?
Date:
Message-ID: <ur7n3cg36.fsf@agharta.de>
On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 07:13:43 -0600, "Paul F. Dietz" <·····@dls.net> wrote:
> Be sure to build gcl with --enable-ansi in the configuration, or to
> use the right binary in a Debian distribution (IIRC, the default is
> the CLtL1 build.)
On newer Debian builds this can be controlled by an environment
variable:
vmware:/tmp# cat /usr/share/doc/gcl/README.Debian
The Debian package gcl
----------------------
Debian GCL now installs both the small 'traditional' lisp image
designed to conform to a pre-ANSI Lisp standard, and an experimental
ANSI image. Please note that ANSI support in GCL is still
preliminary. On an ansi-test suite written by a GCL developer, GCL
fails on a little under 3 percent of the tests. Details can be found
in /usr/share/doc/gcl/test_results.gz.
To toggle the use of the ANSI image, set the environment variable
GCL_ANSI to any non-empty string.
New in 2.6.2
------------
Please see the RELEASE-2.6.2.html file for release note information,
regression testing, and sample benchmarks.
-- Camm Maguire <····@enhanced.com>, Fri Jun 25 22:07:18 2004
Cheers,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Quoth Edi Weitz on or about 2004-11-09:
> > Be sure to build gcl with --enable-ansi in the configuration, or to
> > use the right binary in a Debian distribution (IIRC, the default is
> > the CLtL1 build.)
>
> On newer Debian builds this can be controlled by an environment
> variable:
Also, you'll probably[0] be asked at install time which standard to
default to.
I started learning Lisp about a month ago, using GCL and clisp under
Debian. So far I haven't noticed any differences in behaviour[1],
although I realise that's not much of a reference.
-trent
[0] You can turn off package configuration.
[1] Other than the obvious, like a different prompt.
Iwan van der Kleyn <····@none.net> writes:
> Hi there,
>
> I've been looking at GCL, GNU Common Lisp. The promise of this system
> is the large number of platforms/architectures on which it runs,
> including Windows. However, according to their documentation the
> system was "originally designed to meet the CLtL1 standard" and only
> recently have they aimed for ansi compatibility.
>
> Does anyone have experience with this? How is the quality of the
> system, as opposed to cmucl and sbcl? How is it's ansi compatibility?
> ("good enough" is good enough for me)
>
Well, according to http://www.cliki.net/GCL:
GNU Common Lisp (GCL) is a Common Lisp implementation of the KCL
Family that uses gcc to compile Lisp into native binaries. GCL started
out as a CLtL1-level CL; steady progress is being made towards
bringing it to ANSI CL compliance: It is almost there now. CVS head is
rather close to compliance.
This was not written by me, but I agree in general with this
assessment. I have yet to find a project that faces significant ansi
obstacles when compiling with the version currently in cvs head
(2.7.0), also available as a Debian package, 'gclcvs'. And as others
have stated, at least with the Debian package, one gets both CLtL1 and
ANSI images, in both profiling and non-profiling flavors, with a
system wide default configured at package installation time via
debconf, and overridable at runtime by setting GCL_ANSI and/or
GCL_PROF environment variables.
We are undoubtedly still the least ANSI compliant of the freely
available systems, but as stated above, our current level of
compliance is serviceable in general. If you have an open source
end-user application you want to port to GCL, I personally will
guarantee that GCL will be amended if necessary to support it. I'm
much more motivated by making available real, presently-available,
high quality open source software to the world than I am in abstract
measures of compliance or utility for closed development efforts. This
said, GCL will definitely achieve full ANSI compliance -- it is our
top priority, and there is what appears to be a modest amount of work
remaining, which is currently waiting for a block of free time to
become available.
What one gets with GCL at present is stability/robustness,
performance, portability, and as Paul mentioned separately, compiler
correctness. GCL is, for example, the vehicle that carries maxima,
acl2, and axiom to all 12 architectures in Debian. You might want to
check out our webpage for regression results and some benchmarks.
BTW, I'm always interested in feedback from users, whether expressing
GCL's utility and importance and encouraging further work, or taking
the position that the best thing GCL could do for the world of free
lisp would be to leave the field :-).
Take care,
> Regards,
>
> Iwan van der Kleyn
--
Camm Maguire ····@enhanced.com
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