Bringing SLIME to Clasp about clasp HOT 9 CLOSED

@drmeister I wouldn't mind digging into this, if you want to assign it to me. I'd love to learn more about the internals of both slime and clasp

from clasp.

@CWAndrews You may want to have a look at SLY, as well. SLY is a direct fork of SLIME: https://github.com/capitaomorte/sly

from clasp.

@priyadarshan does that mean we have to integrate with both? or are they API compatible?

from clasp.

I believe they are API compatible, but better ask its main developer, @capitaomorte

from clasp.

Hi, thanks for bringing me in on this. Yes, they are, for now API-compatible, that is, the interfaces to implementation-specific constructs (streams, threads, etc...) needed by SLY and SLIME are exactly the same. I have no intent to have this change in the SLY->SLIME direction, though I might add more optional interfaces to SLY that SLIME will possibly/probably not support.

The .lisp file where this would happen would be differently named if it were to be archived in SLY and SLIME directly and also the packages where this functionality hinges would also be differently named. SLY uses "Slynk" and the name for its packages whereas SLIME uses, "Swank".

But even this small difference is surmountable: using a special backward-compatibility contrib SLY can use SLIME backends directly without any change to the actual code.

Concerning Clasp directly, If I understand correctly it does not support multithreading yet? Is this planned for the near future. I'm asking because the thread/mailbox model it's the way to implement Slynk/Swank backends that I'm most familiar with, and possibly the most powerful.

from clasp.

I added a note to the first comment of the issue regarding the similarity of Clasp to ECL.

from clasp.

Wow, I had two people (mband and cwandrews) ask me the same day whether they could work on the SLIME integration of Clasp. This is awesome. It would be great if you guys could work together or decide on who wants to do it if just one of you want to work on it. Most importantly, I'd like things to be amicable and professional. There is so much cool stuff to be done.

from clasp.

I added a note to the first comment of the issue regarding the similarity of Clasp to ECL.

Having never tried ECL, I didn't know it doesn't support threads either. But if it's a good starting point, then great. If/when I can get Clasp to compile (a homebrew recipe would be sooooo welcome for Mac users) I will try it.

This is awesome. It would be great if you guys could work together or decide on who wants to do it if just one of you want to work on it. Most importantly, I'd like things to be amicable and professional. There is so much cool stuff to be done.

Addressing the "just one of you wamts to to work on it" (though I'm not sure if you were addressing SLY/SLIME or mband/cwandrews duets), SLY has been cherry-picking commits from SLIME since its inception around May 2014, so code sharing in that direction has been very fertile. License-wise, both SLY and SLIME are very permissive.

from clasp.

Slime is working with Clasp as much as possible for the moment. Further steps might have to be involved once Clasp gets threading support and similar extensions.

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