[Axiom-developer] Bootsys and Depsys history

[daly]

Ralf,

I created Bootsys to be a stand-alone boot-to-lisp conversion program.
We needed this because people were writing portions of the system in BOOT
that needed to be in Common Lisp. The Bootsys image did the translations
before the whole system existed. (Axiom no longer has any BOOT code so
Bootsys no longer exists.)

I created Depsys to contain the necessary macros and functions to compile
any file. I helped translate Scratchpad from MacLisp and LispVM to Common
Lisp and a portion of that translation involved writing macros that worked
like their MacLisp and LispVM versions (e.g. fileactq, qcar, etc). These
need to be loaded before compilation.

So in theory you should be able to run Bootsys on any .boot file and end up
with a Common Lisp file. Then you should be able to compile this Common Lisp
file using Depsys.

As more things are moved to BOOT and functionality is added to Bootsys you 
begin to reach a state where you need the Depsys macros which creates a circle.

Scratchpad developers did work in full interpsys images and getting it all
to compile cleanly was my problem. Scratchpad could never build "standalone".
It always needed a running interpsys during the build of interpsys. It was
not until Axiom became open source that I untangled the build graph.

I do not know what your particular problem is but I thought I'd give you
some history about the different images and why they exist. 

Tim