Re: Lisp in embedded systems?

Duane Rettig <duane@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Stefan Arentz <stefan.arentz@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > I'm looking for a new language/environment to do the next version of a
> > medium sized C++ application in. I'm interested in using a flavour of
> > Lisp because I think it will allow us to overcome some of C++'s issues.
> > (Development time, hard to debug, error prone).
> >
> > However, this has to run on an embedded system. And I'm not sure if that
> > will work out with Lisp.
>
> Why not? Have you heard the rumor that Lisp is Big and Slow? It seems
> that rumor just won't die.

No. I started looking at Lisp because I read stories from people who put it
in mars rovers and tiny embedded systems. I just don't have enough experience
to know what is available.

> > The device is small. It just has 2MB flash and 8MB ram. The application
> > really just needs the basics ... threads, sockets, simple data structures,
> > no storage and some bindings to C methods in a library.
>
> Funny; it used to be that 1 Mb _total_ was considered small. And I
> came close, getting lisp inages less than a megabtyte on disk. But
> that was not the same as memory footprint, and my smallest memory
> footprint was about 1.5 Mb.
>
> Of course, your mileage depends upon your needs. If your device
> has graphics, then there's a lot more library space required.

No graphics. Just network io, some bindings to C libraries, threads, xml
parsing and exec()uting unix commands on the system.

> > Performance is not an issue. It just needs to do basic network io
> > once in a while and control some hardware features.
> >
> > Am I crazy to even look at lisp here?
>
> Absolutely. Crazy like a fox.
>
> > Can anyone recommend a public (open source) flavour that would work here?
>
> Why do you need open-source? Why not just free? Try out an Allegro CL
> trial version.

Free is fine, but experience learns that having the source code available is
incredibly useful if you are integrating it in something bigger. Oh and this
needs to run on linux/mips. No Allegro version available for that platform
right?

S.
.

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