Armed Bear Common Lisp README

GENERAL INFORMATION

Armed Bear Common Lisp is a conforming implementation of ANSI Common Lisp that runs in a Java virtual machine. It compiles Lisp code directly to Java byte code.

LICENSE

Armed Bear Common Lisp is distributed under the GNU General Public License with a classpath exception (see "Classpath Exception" below).

A copy of GNU General Public License (GPLv2) is included in this distribution, in file:COPYING.

We have modfied our GPLv2 license section 13 to read:

 13. Linking this library statically or dynamically with other
 modules is making a combined work based on this library. Thus, the
 terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the
 whole combination.

 The following paragraph details the "classpath exception" which ABCL
 allows as an exception to the statement about linking libraries.

 As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give
 you permission to link this software with independent modules to
 produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these
 independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting
 executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet,
 for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the
 license of that module. An independent module is a module which is
 not derived from or based on this software. If you modify this
 software, you may extend this exception to your version of the
 software, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to
 do so, delete this exception statement from your version.

RUNNING FROM DOCKER

With Docker Engine installed one may execute:

docker run -it easye/abcl

to get

illin:~/work/abcl$ docker run -it easye/abcl
Armed Bear Common Lisp 1.6.0-dev
Java 1.8.0_111 Oracle Corporation
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM
Low-level initialization completed in 0.295 seconds.
Startup completed in 1.425 seconds.
Type ":help" for a list of available commands.
CL-USER(1): 23
23

Building a Docker Image With Modifications

Get the source (see below); make yer mods; use the Dockerfile to build.

    docker build -t YOURID/abcl .
    docker run -it YOURID/abcl 

See file:Dockerfile for the build instructions.

RUNNING FROM BINARY RELEASE

After you have downloaded a binary release from either the distributed Maven POM graph or from abcl.org archive unpack it into its own directory. To run ABCL directly from this directory, make sure Java (version 1.6 or up) is in your shell's path.

To start ABCL, simply issue the following command:

cmd$ java -jar abcl.jar

which should result in output like the following

Armed Bear Common Lisp 1.6.0-dev
Java 1.8.0_131 Oracle Corporation
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM
Low-level initialization completed in 0.324 seconds.
Startup completed in 1.892 seconds.
Type ":help" for a list of available commands.
CL-USER(1):

Yer now at the interactive ABCL "Read Eval Print Loop" (REPL): hacks 'n glory await.

BUILDING FROM SOURCE RELEASE

ABCL may be built from its source code by executing the build instructions file:build.xml expressed by the venerable Apache Ant tool.

To build, one must have a Java 6, 7 or 8 Java Development Kit (JDK) installed locally. Just the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) isn't enough, as you need the Java compiler ('javac') to compile the Java source of the ABCL implementation.

Download a binary distribution Ant version 1.7.1 or greater. Unpack the files somewhere convenient, ensuring that the 'ant' (or 'ant.bat' under Windows) executable is in your path and executable.

Then simply executing

cmd$ ant

from the directory containing the file:build.xml instructions will create an executable wrapper ('abcl' under UNIX, 'abcl.bat' under Windows). Use this wrapper to start ABCL.

The build may be customized by copying file:abcl.properties.in to file:abcl.properties, which will cause Ant to attempt to build incrementally as well as optimizing the runtime for a contemporary 64bit desktop/server machine running Java 8. The file may be edited for further customization.

Using NetBeans

Alternatively, one may install the Netbeans visual integrated development environment, which contains both the Java Development Kit as well as the Ant build tool.

With Netbeans, one should be able to open the ABCL directory as a project whereupon the usual build, run, and debug targets as invoked in the GUI are available. Use the 'slime' config with a suitably linked 'swank.asd' in '~/.asdf-install-dir/systems/' to connect a REPL to the NetBeans debug process.

BUGS

ABCL is a conforming ANSI Common Lisp implementation. Any other behavior should be reported as a bug.

ABCL now has a manual stating its conformance to the ANSI standard, providing a compliant and practical Common Lisp implementation.

Tests

ABCL 1.5.0 now fails 48 out of 21708 total tests in the revised and expanded ANSI CL test suite (derived from the tests originally written for GCL).

Maxima's test suite runs without failures.

ABCL comes with a test suite, see the output of ant help.test for more information.

Deficiencies

Many. But patches to address issues mentioned above will be gladly accepted.

CONTACT

Please report problems to the development mailing list:

<[email protected]>

Have fun!

AUTHORS

On behalf of all ABCL development team and contributors,

Mark Evenson
Erik Huelsmann
Rudolf Schlatte
Alessio Stalla
Ville Voutilainen

alan
olof ferada
pipping
slyrus
vibhu
dmiles

June 2017