Re: [Gcl-devel] Re: [Axiom-developer] New design for Axiom web site

[root]

Arthur, Mark,

You make a very convincing case. The key concern, it appears, is forking.
The hope is to migrate changes back into the common lisp. Unless all of
the common lisps agree on a socket standard I don't see how this can happen
but I am willing to try.

It might be the case that every modern common lisp DOES have socket code
and that the socket support could be rewritten (with #+ for each lisp).
We also use some X library support code which might will generic support.
I'll look at that direction. Does anybody know if GCL has sockets at the
lisp level (not inline C code)? I'd be happy to ditch the C code completely
but only if I know that the functionality can be re-implemented in lisp.

After I finish the book the next task is to get sman (superman, the thing
that actually starts when you start axiom) running so the other processes
can communicate. Dylan's going to look at the graphics process and I will
focus on getting hyperdoc back to life.

In the near term (at least the next year) I suspect we will still need
the sources for any common lisp we build upon. These could be
installed sources.  In the long term I'll plan to push toward using
installed lisps.  (Keep in mind that the long term plan is for Axiom to
run on every common lisp.  The fact that GCL has all the support we
need already built in doesn't mean that we're done.)

In Axiom if you want to use an installed gcl instead of the tar file you just:

cd lsp
ln -s (yourGCLdistributionPath)/gcl-2.17.1 gcl-2.17.1
touch gcldir
cd ..
make GCLVERSION=gcl-2.17.1

The symbolic link will use the already installed sources.
The "touch" will convince Axiom that it does not need to build the lisp again.
The GCLVERSION variable says what version you want to use.

I'll add these instructions to the FAQ in Makefile.pamphlet.

We could make this the default install instructions, I suppose, but
that shifts the burden of building onto the end user whereas it
currently resides in the makefile. If the installed sources were
installed as root then the user will have to install as root which is
currently unnecessary (one should never work as root :-) ) I'll break
out the "patching" portion of the stanza so it can be executed against
pre-installed sources.

If you move to a new, untested version of GCL, the build is likely to
fail late into the Axiom build because lisp won't contain the Axiom
extensions.

About Camm's suggestion: I didn't understand the suggestion (and still don't).
I feel like I "missed a memo" on that one. 

Arthur, what is your feeling about making the Axiom C code part of the
standard CCL distribution? 

Tim
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