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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: CMUCL on Win32 (Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace (real reason))
Message-ID: <1997Feb20.112543.2462@wavehh.hanse.de>
Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de
Organization: '(a (cons structive organization))
References: <01bc13dc$cfaa2b20$0f02000a@gjchome.nis.newscorp.com> <330512CF.6458@acm.org> <hbaker-1502970919500001@10.0.2.1> <33096B71.1C04@acm.com> <vfr750E5t8G6.L8@netcom.com> <330C009F.4F95@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 97 11:25:43 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:25573 comp.lang.scheme:18769

Patrick Giagnocavo <pgiag@earthlink.net> writes:

>OK wise guys, here is a challenge for you:

>CMU CL has recently been ported to the Linux and FreeBSD platforms. 
>This means that now a lot of the real tricky stuff concerning x86
>assembler output has been solved. 

>Which one of you blathering Lisp weenies (not to name any names mind
>you) has the guts to try compiling this under the Cygnus/GNU toolkit
>that implements a lot of posix functionality under Win32? A bunch of you
>have stated that you are doing things under Windows anyways, right?

I already tried this.

The latest Beta versions of GNU-Win32 miss functionality to access the
saved state of CPU registers in a signal handler (that is: the state
the registers had before the signal was received). We need this for
the garbage collector.

I'm not going to meet the GNU-Win32 community to discuss this issue at
length for a platform I don't use. 

But maybe you can offer some help in that you hunt down a solution for
this and send the result to cmucl-imp@cons.org?

>Such a programming environment would be free for any purpose; but the
>license for CMUCL if I remember correctly is more of a BSD style
>license, making it easier to use in commercial/proprietary code.  Gui
>code would have to wait until later of course, but at least it would be
>a start; interface to TCPIP and you could run on NT and display the X
>windows part of the gui on any X box.

"Any X box" could be a Windows Box also. There are very usable X11
servers for Windows and the client libraries run anyway. I expect a
free X11 server for Windows in short (didn't the Xfree folks already
release such a beast for OS/2?).

>The non-gui code would obviously be source code compatible across all
>supported CMU CL platforms; you know, SPARC, UltraSPARC, SGI's, Linux,
>FreeBSD, (Alpha?), PA-RISC, PowerPC/AIX.

>Put up or shut up time!  Are you going to flap your jaws, or roll up
>your sleeves and actually do something?

Some question back, Patrick :-)

If you contribute knowledge (or work to get knowledge) about
GNU-Win32, I will contribute CMUCL rebuild experience.

Martin
--
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
