Hi Lisp coders,
I am writing games in C++ at the
moment and I am getting brassed
off with all the memory leaks
in my code... I have been using
Emacs Lisp for quite some time
now and I am thinking of using
Common Lisp to write games in
the future.
So what I am looking for is
a version that of Common Lisp
that is free and fast.
Here are the versions that
I am considering:
(1) CMUCL, which is fast but
as I understand is not available
for windows at present.
(2) CLisp, which is free
but not as fast as the
other two in this list.
(3) Franz Allegro CL which
is fast but not free. I prefer
to use free (open source) software.
Does anyone know of how long
it will take CMUCL to become
available on Windows XP? It
shouln't be to hard given
the existence of Cygwin/Mingw.
If I had enough know-how,
I would like to help in the
development of an open
source Lisp.
·············@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi Lisp coders,
>
> I am writing games in C++ at the
> moment and I am getting brassed
> off with all the memory leaks
> in my code... I have been using
> Emacs Lisp for quite some time
> now and I am thinking of using
> Common Lisp to write games in
> the future.
>
> So what I am looking for is
> a version that of Common Lisp
> that is free and fast.
There is no such thing as a "best Lisp". All implementations have their
respective strengths and weaknesses.
You should be more specific about the kinds of features you expect.
There is a wide variety of games that can be written, so that alone is
not sufficient to give you more specific suggestions. (You could want
to, say, write Quake-style games or a good chess program - they have
very different requirements.)
> Here are the versions that
> I am considering:
>
> (1) CMUCL, which is fast but
> as I understand is not available
> for windows at present.
The code that CMUCL (and SBCL) compiles to is indeed quite fast, but
their underlying compiler is quite slow - it seems to do a lot of
reasoning in order to achieve the resulting efficiency. If you need
runtime compilation or a fast edit-run cycle, this can be a bad thing.
> (2) CLisp, which is free
> but not as fast as the
> other two in this list.
Paul Graham has chosen clisp for Yahoo Stores because it had one of the
fastest stream implementations (back then), and reportedly its floating
point operations are also very fast.
Just because clisp is a (bytecode-based) interpreter doesn't necessarily
mean that it's slow for the things you want to do.
> (3) Franz Allegro CL which
> is fast but not free. I prefer
> to use free (open source) software.
The commercial implementations all come with add-ons, some of which you
don't get for open-source implementations. Furthermore, they provide
integration of the add-ons, so that you can have a good start without
having to spend too much time to organize the libraries that you need
(if you're lucky).
Open source means that you spend less money, but more time. (In other
communities, this might be different.)
> Does anyone know of how long
> it will take CMUCL to become
> available on Windows XP? It
> shouln't be to hard given
> the existence of Cygwin/Mingw.
IIRC, there are people porting CMUCL to Windows. But they do it in their
spare time, so it's hard to tell how long this will take.
You haven't listed a comprehensive list of implementations. You can find
more at http://wiki.alu.org:80/Implementation
> If I had enough know-how,
> I would like to help in the
> development of an open
> source Lisp.
There is a Wiki about CL implementations and libraries at
http://www.cliki.net and a code repository at http://common-lisp.net -
there, you will probably find good opportunities to contribute.
Pascal
--
OOPSLA'05 tutorial on generic functions & the CLOS Metaobject Protocol
++++ see http://p-cos.net/oopsla05-tutorial.html for more details ++++
From: Christophe Rhodes
Subject: Re: What is the best Lisp for Windows?
Date:
Message-ID: <sq8xxu1r8w.fsf@cam.ac.uk>
Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net> writes:
> Paul Graham has chosen clisp for Yahoo Stores because it had one of
> the fastest stream implementations (back then), and reportedly its
> floating point operations are also very fast.
You probably meant "bignum" rather than "floating point"; while this
is still true it is less true than in the past -- in that other
implementations have recently improved their bignum routines, not that
clisp's routines suddenly slowed down.
Christophe
·············@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi Lisp coders,
>
> I am writing games in C++ at the
> moment and I am getting brassed
> off with all the memory leaks
> in my code... I have been using
> Emacs Lisp for quite some time
> now and I am thinking of using
> Common Lisp to write games in
> the future.
For you the BEST CL would be Corman Common Lisp.
http://www.cormanlisp.com/index.html
It supports native threading, foreign callbacks into
Lisp .... all the goodies. And most importantly it
allows inline x86 assembler into Lisp functions (see
chapter 9 of the user manual) for optimizing those hard
core gaming functions.
You get all the source. Its free if you do not want to
use the IDE, but a mere $249 for a license.
Wade
Another vote for cormanlisp for games programming. If the original
poster means game programming to mean real time graphics, then you need
a lisp with a good compiler and a mature interface to the win32 API,
DirectX and or OpenGL. Corman has all this.
I've been spending some time getting CLisp to connect with OpenGL and
SDL, but I haven't had much luck with that. And if I do get it working
then there's no way to distribute Clisp exe's since you need to provide
the interpreter to run the memory image.
> I am writing games in C++ at the
> moment and I am getting brassed
> off with all the memory leaks
> in my code...
Garbage collection isn't the answer to poor memory management. Memory
disappears as easily in GC languages whose data structures are not
managed correctly.
If your problem is knowing when to free memory, or who 'owns' the
memory, GC can be a great resource. If you just don't know what exists
or why, you'll still leak in a language that supports garbage
collection (but probably you'll have slower leaks). Also, memory is
about the easiest resource to manage if you consider mutexes and files
and network streams and . . .
It's still a good idea to use lisp. C++ is a "hard" language - many
'gotcha' details and a lot of syntactical overhead for common actions.
(I've been writing C++ professionally for 10 years, and I LOVE it, but
this isn't the place for defending it. :) So switch to Lisp and keep
in mind that you still need to know what happens to your memory and
it'll be easier to deal with when you know.
I'm not trying to be snotty or condescending, but I would like to save
you some frustration when you find memory disappearing in lisp.
Now, I will commit a comp.lang.lisp SIN and mention that MS Visual
Studio C++ supports 'managed' C++ that has garbage collection and .NET
integration. I think they are still giving their beta edition away.
The compiler is certainly free, but the IDE you have to get in the beta
stage or pay.
> The compiler is certainly free, but the IDE you have to
> get in the beta stage or pay.
For an alternative to the MSVC++ IDE take a look at Zeus:
http://www.zeusedit.com/ccpp.html
Zeus can be easily configured for almost any language and
any set of build tools.
Note: Zeus is shareware (45 day trial).
Jussi Jumppanen
Author: Zeus for Windows