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Description of GCL (GNU Common Lisp) system.
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The GCL system contains C and Lisp source files to build a Common Lisp
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sytem. The original KCL system was written by Taiichi Yuasa and
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Masami Hagiya in 1984. The AKCL system work was begun in 1987 by
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William Schelter and continued through 1994. A number of people have
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contributed ports and pieces. The file doc/contributors lists some of
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these. In 1994 AKCL was released as GCL (GNU Common Lisp) under the
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GNU public library license. Version akcl-1-624 was the last version
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made under the old license and using the old file change mechanism.
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This readme only applies to versions gcl.1.0 and later. The GNU
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library license does allow redistribution of executables containing
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GCL as well as proprietary code, but such redistribution must be
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accompanied by sufficient material (eg .o files) to allow recipients
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to rebuild an executable, after possibly modifying GCL. See the GNU
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file COPYING.LIB-2.0 for a full description of your right to copy this
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Releases of GCL after 2.0 contain a GCL connection with the windowing
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tools TCL/TK. If 'configure' is able to find the relevant libraries on
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your system, then a gcl-tk server will be compiled as well by the main
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make. It is based on TK 8.0 and TCL 8.0 and available from
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ftp.cs.berkeley.edu and many mirrors.
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* There are source files on ftp.ma.utexas.edu:pub/gcl/gcl.x.x.tgz You
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probably want the highest XX version number. For example gcl-1.0.tgz
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would allow you to build the version 1.0 of GCL. In the following
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this compressed tar file is simply referred to as gcl.tgz. If you
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do not have gzip it is available in the directory
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/anyonymous@prep.ai.mit.edu:/u2/emacs .
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Hopefully sometime, GCL will also be available on prep.ai.mit.edu.
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To make the whole system, if you have obtained gcl.tgz.
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UNCOMPRESS and UNTAR the SOURCES:
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--------------------------------
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Change to a directory in which you wish to build gcl, eg ~/tmp.
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Copy the file gcl.tgz to this directory.
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% gzip -dc gcl.tgz | tar xvf -
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This will create the subdirectory gcl-y.xxx with all the sources in it.
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ADD MACHINE DEFINITIONS TO MAKEFILES:
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------------------------------------
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This will analyze your system, generate a file called makedefs, insert
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it into the various makefiles and create a proper h/config.h header
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Some command line options can be used with the configure script; try
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./configure --help to find out about them.
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Note that if you have tcl/tk (version 4.2 tk or 7.6 tcl or later),
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then a file tclConfig.sh and tkConfig.sh should exist in some place
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such as /usr/local/lib.
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The make should continue without error. There may be occasional
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warnings from the C compiler, but all files should compile successfully
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At the end you should see a message at the end "Make of GCL xxx
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completed", where xxx stands for the version number. Every successful
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compilation generates an automatic notification email to
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gcl@math.utexas.edu to help in determininig on which machines and
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levels of the OS compilation has been successful. If you don't want to
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assist in the maintenance in this way do
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% ./configure --enable-notify=no
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When it has finally finished you may invoke GCL by using
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GCL (GNU Common Lisp) Version(2.3) Sun May 7 14:11:30 CDT 2000
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Licensed under GNU Library General Public License
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Contains Enhancements by W. Schelter
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If you had TCL/TK, then you should be able to do
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>(load "gcl-tk/demos/widget.lisp")
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Note there are currently problems with the demos, since they were
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based on an older version of tcl/tk.
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(setq si::*tk-library* "/usr/lib/tk")
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[where /usr/lib/tk/tk.tcl is]
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To install under /usr/local (or under the directory specified
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with the --prefix= option of the ./configure script)
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The default installation puts a full executable in
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/usr/local/lib/gcl-version/unixport/saved_gcl
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and some documentation in
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/usr/local/lib/gcl-x.x/info/
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and some autoloading files in
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/usr/local/lib/gcl-x.x/lsp
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and a shell script in
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/usr/local/lib/gcl-x.x/xbin/gcl
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This script is also copied to
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(and how you may be able to help) Volunteers should contact
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William Schelter (wfs@math.utexas.edu)
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a) Upgrading to comply with the forthcoming ANSI standard. Work
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b) Need work on providing a high level window interface. One possible
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way would be a good connection with TCL/TK. Another would be to go
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in the direction of CLIM.
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A new compiler has been written, which is closer to the ANSI standard
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and provides some other benefits. It will be in a future release.
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We will need people willing to beta test and isolate any bugs.
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Additonal work planned or desired:
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* Clean up distribution and installation. Make it easier to link in
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C code such as Novak's window stuff. Faslink is not portable (since
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many systems don't support ld -A).
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* Introduce COMMON-LISP and COMMON-LISP-USER packages as per ANSI
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standard, change the package functions to behave as in the ANSI
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standard. Any other changes which people can identify which would
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make life easier, and are compatible with ANSI.
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* Introduce C level and Lisp level way of signalling errors of the
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types specified by the ANSI standard. Make it so that when the CLOS
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is present these become error objects.
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* Fix the run-process stuff to properly deallocate processes and
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have listen do the right thing, by using select, which is POSIX. Try
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to make it compatible with the one in Allegro or Lucid.
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Done * Turn ANSI documentation into the new Lisp's on-line documentation.
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This will be useful for development and for users. No sense in basing
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our work on the CLTL 2. Must go to the ANSI document itself.
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* Make an appropriate Unix man page.
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* Add my allocation files and other changes necessary to make
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INTERRUPTS safe. This probably means adding in all the C files which
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I have already written.
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* Change function calls to all refer to C stack and pass return
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values in a uniform way, the way the new compiler does it. This will
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greatly improve funcalling, since right now there are generally two
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types of functions which can be expected, and they expect their
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arguments in different places.
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* Change to the new compiler which does things better from the ANSI
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point of view, and is smaller, and makes all function calls go via the
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* Include CLOS support. Possibly take this from PCL or from
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Attardi, who has written some.
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Done * Include a windowing interface with TCL/TK which is capable of
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producing TK (similar to Motif but public) style windows and
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scrollable menus, etc. This implementation must be done in such a way
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that it works in at least one additional Lisp, such as Allegro or
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* Loop package: either make sloop satisfy the standard or include
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another implementation.
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* Changes to READ for ANSI, (including case sensitivity, etc.).
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* Byte compiler based on first pass of the new compiler. Ideally
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provides very small code and extremely rapid compiling for general
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platform. Notes: I have put the interrupt and run-process stuff early
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on since it is necessary for window development.
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* Construct a Common Lisp test suite to help debug new releases.
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If you use GNU emacs, a convenient method for viewing documentation
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of Common Lisp functions (or functions in an extended system), is
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provided by the doc/find-doc.el file. This will be installed when you
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do make in the doc directory. Adding the following to your .emacs
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file will allow you to use C-h d to find documentation.
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(autoload 'find-doc "find-doc" nil t)
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(global-set-key "d" 'find-doc)
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(visit-doc-file "/usr/local/lib/gcl/doc/DOC")
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See the file find-doc.el for more information. Otherwise you may use
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the describe command inside Lisp. For example (describe 'print) will
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print out information about print. It will access the gcl-si.info,
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gcl-tk.info, and gcl.info if these exist. gcl.info (containing the
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ansi proposed definitions) is on ftp.ma.utexas.edu:pub/gcl/gcl.info.tgz
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TROUBLE SHOOTING (some common problems reported):
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1) Did you extract the files with the original write dates--make
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depends heavily on this?
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2) Did you use -O on a compiler which puts out bad code? Any time you
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change the settings or use a new c compiler this is a tricky point.
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3) If you can't save an image, try doing so on the file server rather
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4) Doing the make on a client with the main files on a server, has
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sometimes caused random breakage. The large temp files used by the C
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compiler seem to sometimes get transferred incorrectly. Solution: use
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the server for the compile.
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5) Did you make changes in the .defs or .h files, other than just
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commenting out a CC=gcc line?
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6) Did you read the recommendations in the XXXX.defs file on what
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C compiler versions work?
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7) (si::tkconnect) fails:
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a) Make sure DISPLAY variable set before
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b) gcltkaux (subsidiary process) uses shared libraries and
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you would need LD_LIBRARY_PATH set on say suns, to say where those are
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if they are not in default places. [make sure "wish" would work]
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CHANGING THINGS: MAYBE EDIT THREE FILES:
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Normally you should not need to edit ANY files. There may be some
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parameter sizes you wish to change or if you don't have gcc where
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we have made that the default, then see CC below.
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EDIT the ./add-defs script
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If when you do `add-defs machine` the add-defs script is not able to
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find directories where things like tk.h, libX11.a etc are, then it
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will print out a message. You can to have it look in some extra
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places on your machine, or in a different order. Note that if it
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fails to find these things the tcl/tk support will not be built, but
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you will have an ordinary common lisp.
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EDIT the appropriate h/NAME.defs file. These are definitions to
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be included in the various makefiles.
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For example if the `NAME' of your machine is sun3-os4.
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% emacs h/sun3-os4.defs
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* CC: set C compiler options. For example, if you are using the GNU
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CC = gcc -msoft-float -DVOL=volatile -I$(GCLDIR)/o
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Or, if you are using the conventional UNIX C compiler:
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CC = cc -DVOL= -I. -I$(GCLDIR)/o
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If you want files in the main c source compiled with debugging
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information. Note this is incompatible with OFLAGS= -O on
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some compilers. Size will be smaller without -g, but you
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are then helpless in the face of problems.
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* INITFORM: The normal thing is to just have the one form
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required for fast loading.
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INITFORM=(si::build-symbol-table)
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EDIT the file h/NAME.h (eg h/sun3-os4.h)
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(Actually you probably don't need to change it)
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This file will be included by virtually every compilation of C
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files, except the translated C produced by kcl.
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if you wish to change a parameter such as MAXPAGE 16384 established
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in bsd.h (ie. number of 2000 byte pages you want as your absolute max
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swap space). MAXPAGE must be a power of 2.
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#define MAXPAGE (2 * 16384)
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You may similarly redefine VSSIZE the maximum size for the value
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stack (running very deep recursion interpreted may well require this).
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W. Schelter, the University of Texas, and other parties provide this
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program on an "as is" basis without warranty of any kind, either
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expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied
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warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
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See the file doc/contributors for a partial list of people who have
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made helpful contributions to ports etc.
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