Re: Beginner emacs / SLIME / ACL / ASDF question


Tel A. wrote:
Every lisp implementation has a default startup file it runs before
dropping you into the REPL. You should edit this file to load ASDF and
then pushnew where you want to store your files.

ACL-express' is called .clinit.cl and should be placed in your home
folder (whatever that means on XP)

Here's (part of) mine:

(require 'asdf)
; ASDF Configuration
(pushnew "/Users/tel/Library/Lisp/Asdf-Registry/systems/"
asdf:*central-registry*
:test #'equal)


Thanks for the response. XP does not have a concept of Home Folder,
but I *think* that C: is the default.

Digging into this, it seems that the command line option "-qq" will
disable using the .clinit.cl file. When I kill the Allegro process,
Emacs displays the following text in the mini-buffer:

"d:/program files/acl80-express/allegro-ansi.exe" +B +cm -qq -L
"C:/Program Files/LispBox-0.7/start-slime.lisp" -- -p 4006: finished.

This seems to be the command by which ACL and Slime were launched...
Strangely though I searched through all the files in my LispBox
directory and my ACL directory and could not find that command-string
anywhere. I can't figure out where that comes from. However, there
seem to be a number of configurations items happening, as this version
(which was meant to accompany the book "Practical Common Lisp") has a
number of settings that the default "Lisp In a Box" does not have.

I'm still fairly new to LISP and very new to the whole emacs / LISP
interaction. It's an intriguing idea, but I'm not yet fully
comfortable with it.

Check out this movie Marco Baringer made. You might have to watch it
several times to get everything he does, but he shows a wonderful
example of effective use of slime.

http://bc.tech.coop/blog/050728.html

Thanks! I watched the whole thing. Definately a lot to learn. I've
spent a lot of time using Visual Studio, and so the certain aspects of
Emacs are very frustrating to me. In particular, it's biggest strength
- that it is written in, and understands, LISP - is also the most
frustrating part for me as I don't understand the boundaries between
editor, environment, and Compiler / REPL.

Also, everything's written using Unix file system idioms. Windows,
unfortunately, uses long directory and file names, and lacks a concept
of "root" or "home". This often makes these ported-from-unix systems
cumbersome to work with.

There's another system called ASDF-Install that allows the automatic
fetching and installation of systems posted on Cliki. It's very useful,
so I suggest you base your Registry set up off of it.

Here's how I do it:

I have an Asdf-Registry folder in an appropriate location
(/Users/tel/Library/Lisp/Asdf-Registry/) which contains two
subdirectories: site and systems. site contains individual folders for
each project which each have a .asd file at the toplevel. systems
contains symbolic links (apparently this is possible in XP - I've
never done it: http://shell-shocked.org/article.php?id=284) to all of
the .asd files. All you have to do then is point *central-registry* at
the systems folder - as done in my .clinit.cl file.

To make this totally compatible wth ASDF-Install, I also have this as
the second part of my .clinit.cl file:

(unless (featurep 'asdf-install)
(asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op 'asdf-install))
; ASDF-Install Configuration
(setf asdf-install:*locations*
'((#P"/Users/tel/Library/Lisp/Asdf-Registry/site/"
#P"/Users/tel/Library/Lisp/Asdf-Registry/systems/"
"Personal Installation.")))


Hope this gives you some ideas. Good luck!

-ja

Thanks for the tips. I will try ASDF-install. I didn't realize that
there was an automatic download / installation tool. I hope it works
on Windows :) ...

Matt

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