RE: [Axiom-developer] RE: Boot vs. Lisp

[Weiss, Juergen]

Dear Martin,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Martin Rubey
> Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 11:59 AM
> To: Weiss, Juergen
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: Boot vs. Lisp
> 
> Dear Jürgen, Tim, *,
> 
> Oops, I didn't know about these points. Since it seems that 
> Jürgen and Tim have
> some knowledge about Boot, maybe the two of you could drink 
> some coffee
> together and decide upon a route that Axiom is to take?

In the last 2 years, I did not have much time to contribute
with the exception of a few mails with my opinion on a few
details. As some else already wrote, people who contribute
code have more influence on the project. 
 
> "Weiss, Juergen" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > 3. Parsing BOOT code
> > 
> > The parser for SPAD code is able to parse BOOT code as well 
> -- which is not
> > too surprising after point 2 above. You can build Axiom 
> with it -- after a
> > few cosmetic changes in syntax in a few more recent files written in
> > BOOT. This parser is equally capable of parsing the 
> interpreter input (modulo
> > rules to be fair). The parser has certain deficiencies (for 
> example the poor
> > error messages in the compiler showing lisp code).  This 
> parser is written
> > with the help of a parser generator (meta). There is 
> another parser for boot
> > code in the src/boot directory (always wondered, why it 
> exists). Then there
> > is parser which is used for the Axiom interpreter 
> (src/interp/pf2* files and
> > others). It is capable of parsing rules.
> 
> So, is it possible to have only one parser for all code 
> written in pile syntax?
> I suppose that we will always need to have a second parser 
> (which will maybe be
> Christian Aisleitners) for the nopile syntax.
> 
> Does this parser exist already and is it working -- the above 
> seems to imply
> that it is currently not in use?

This parser is the one used by the SPAD algebra compiler. But
as I already noted: it has severe deficiences with respect 
to error reporting and maybe some other things.

> 
> Another question:
> 
> I believe that you have posted a long time ago that you had 
> succesfully built
> Axiom with CMUCL. Is this true and is this reproduceable? I 
> just found the
> link, it is 
> 
> http://www.staff.uni-mainz.de/weiss/axiom_cmu.tgz
> 
> So, couldn't we add CMUCL as a second compiler?

Using the CMU compiler is not a big deal. The tar archive
you mentioned has, I think, a running (but old) version in it.
It would not be difficult to fold the changes into the
current version. As is, it does not support the external
programs (hyperdoc, graphics) as I did not link the 
C library into the lisp image. This could probably
by done, or better, as CMU CL does support an almost
complete interface to Unix system calls (and especially
sockets) one could easily recode the glue to the
external programs in Lisp.

The compiler in CMU CL gives a lot of good error messages
and warnings. I found quite a few bugs in the
AXIOM sources with it. And I think the system is a little faster
then GCL on average (did not do too much benchmarking though).

Regards

Juergen Weiss


Juergen Weiss     | Universitaet Mainz, Zentrum fuer Datenverarbeitung,
address@hidden| 55099 Mainz, Tel: +49(6131)39-26361, FAX: +49(6131)39-26407