(X)Emacs, Slime, SBCL on Win32

On Linux I use emacs, but wanted to give Xemacs a try on Windows and learn about the differences.

At the moment I use lispbox-0.7 with clisp-2.39 on WinXP for learning lisp. I made already a few additions to the lispbox in the past. Now only little changes where necessary and I got it working with sbcl-0.9.15 and currenct cvs version of Slime.

Then I installed XEmacs and figured how to set it up on WinXP. It worked with SBCL,
but on loading SLIME I got this error
…
ensure_space: failed to validate 41938944 bytes at 0×02000000
(hint: Try “ulimit -a”; maybe you should increase memory limits.)
…

Have no idea at the moment how to solve this.
Tried to “ulimit -s 8192″ on MSys before re-compiling SBCL as mentioned on various web pages, but MSys doesn’t allow me changing stacksize. Ok, sometime, somehow I’ll get it working.

Compiling SBCL-0.9.15 with MingW/MSys on Win32

This is the result from this thread on comp.lang.lisp and how I got sbcl-0.9.15 compiled & working on my Windows XP System. No guarantee that this works on EVERY system.

Setting up the enviroment for compilation with MingW/MSys

1. Download MingW-5.3.0 installer here.
2. install
3. Get MSys-1.0 here
4. install
5. download the other stuff (from bash to gawk) from sourceforge
6. copy the contents of each into your <\MSYS\1.0> directory.

Installation of sbcl 0.9.12 binaries (you need this for compilation)

1. Download sbcl-0.9.12-win32 , unzip in a temporary directory.
2. Create another dir like, for example c:\SBCL
   
3. Add this path ( c:\SBCL ) to the system path in your windows enviroment
4. Add an enviroment variable SBCL_HOME and set it to a path like c:/SBCL/lib/sbcl (note the forward slashes !)
   Setup will create necessary subdirectories
5. I had to open the install.sh in the sbcl-0.9.12 directory in an texteditor and changed the line
   cp src/runtime/sbcl $BUILD_ROOT$INSTALL_ROOT/bin/
   to
   cp src/runtime/sbcl.exe $BUILD_ROOT$INSTALL_ROOT/bin/
   (without installation was interrupted with an Segementation fault)
6. Start MSys and run following commands
7. cd /path/to/sbcl-0.9.12-binaries # example: C:/sbcl-0.9.12 (note forward slashes)
   
8. INSTALL_ROOT=”c:/SBCL” sh install.sh # this is the install command
   
9. close MSys after installation completed
10. open a DOS window and test installation with executing the command
    > sbcl
11. If you get an error, reboot to set the enviroment properly, and test again

Compilation of sbcl-0.9.15 (Actual release 0.9.16 was broken on my WindowsXP)

1. Download sources from sourceforge
2. Unzip in a directory of your choice
3. Start MSys, and run following commands
4. $ cd /path/to/sbcl-0.9.15/sources (example: C:/sbcl-0.9.15 – note forward slashes)
   
5. $ sh make.sh “sbcl” (I used it with the “sbcl” arg otherwiseI got an error)
6. (wait till compilation finishes)
7. $INSTALL_ROOT=”c:/SBCL” sh install.sh (installation overwrites 0.9.12 files)
   

Now you got a working sbcl-0.9.15 system !
Have fun !

Many thanks go to Jack Unrue and K.R.Sreeram for their help.
Without I wouldn’t have managed this.

Learning Lisp (2)

Didn’t write much as I was quite ill for a few weeks with some kind of allergy.

Nevertheless I used the time and red a lot about development with Lisp. Understanding more and more it’s still not easy if you are spoilt by Windows Development for many years. But I don’t give up and am trying to setup working development enviroments on Linux and Windows and am still searching for a way to develop GUI’s.

BTW: I found Inflisp – Lisp Interpreter for Delphi – quite interesting stuff.