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[eurolisp] 'Exoctic' Programming Tools Go Mainstream
by Pascal Costanza 06 Feb '06

06 Feb '06

Strike: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1917191,00.asp Pascal -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium

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[eurolisp] Beer/London/Sunday-or-Tuesday
by Luke Gorrie 05 Feb '06

05 Feb '06

.. somewhere not too far from the Strand? Christophe and Dan seem to be hiding from me on IRC. :-) Cheers, Luke (+46 701 040 041)

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[eurolisp] [ANN] New versions of Closer libraries + AspectL
by Pascal Costanza 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

New versions of the libraries in the Closer Project have been released, including the Closer to MOP compatibility layer for the CLOS MOP and the ContextL extension for Context-oriented Programming. Furthermore, AspectL has been moved to the Closer Project, with its new version 0.7. Previously, it was an independent project that I haven't maintained anymore. Now that bitrot has started to increase, I have ported it to the Closer to MOP layer which turned out to be a surprisingly smooth process. This especially means that the number of Common Lisp implementations that it runs on has increased. Two bugs in Allegro Common Lisp that have led to problems in conjunction with AspectL have also been fixed in the meantime: A bug that has prevented a non-special slot to be turned into a special slot has been fixed in Allegro 7.0 and 8.0, and the limitation that a defmethod form doesn't accept more than one qualifier has been fixed in Allegro 8.0. Allegro Common Lisp 8.0 now supports the full functionality of AspectL. Furthermore, the following changes have been made to AspectL: - Some of the functionality was previously ported from AspectL to ContextL, mostly because it is not genuine aspect-oriented functionality. Those parts are now removed from AspectL implementation-wise in order to avoid code duplication. Instead, AspectL imports that functionality from ContextL, and exports it again for compatibility reasons. Existing AspectL code should mostly work as before. - Likewise, the CLOS MOP wrappers are completely removed because Closer to MOP supports compatibility across different CLOS MOP implementations much better. - Finally, the package structure is much simplified. Instead of placing every functionality in its own package, there is now the (previously already available) ASPECTL package from which everything can be imported. The previous scheme was too complicated and offered no obvious advantages. See http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/ for the Closer Project and http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/aspectl.html for AspectL. Pascal -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium

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[eurolisp] laptop-friendly meeting place in Paris
by Timothy Moore 30 Jan '06

30 Jan '06

Hi, Can anyone recommend a good place in Paris to meet with a colleague for the day? I'm looking for someplace laptop-friendly (WiFi not necessary, but it would be nice to plug in two laptops) where we can work for a full day. Being obligated to buy coffee and snacks is definitely OK. Thanks in advance, Tim

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[eurolisp] [ANN] Closer Project: New Releases
by Pascal Costanza 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

Today, I have released new versions of all the packages currently included in the Closer Project - see http://common-lisp.net/project/ closer/ for the project and http://p-cos.blogspot.com/2006/01/closer- project-new-releases.html for the announcement. This project is an umbrella project for a few subprojects whose aim is to improve the usability of the CLOS MOP across different Common Lisp implementations. It is also the home of ContextL, a full-fledged CLOS extension in its own right providing language constructs for Context-oriented Programming (COP). All packages now support the current versions of all supported Common Lisp implementations. They are: • Allegro Common Lisp 7.0 Enterprise Edition. • Allegro Common Lisp 8.0 Enterprise Edition. • CLisp 2.35 - 2.37 • CMU Common Lisp 19c • LispWorks 4.4.5, 4.4.6 for Macintosh, Personal Edition • LispWorks 4.4.5, 4.4.6 for Macintosh, Professional Edition • Macintosh Common Lisp 5.1 • OpenMCL 1.0 • SBCL 0.9.7, 0.9.8 Highlights of the new versions. MOP Feature Tests 0.4: • All previous known but untested problems have either been resolved or turned into actual tests. • Added a test for checking whether the slot order requested by a primary method for COMPUTE-SLOTS is honored by a MOP. (Thanks to Christophe Rhodes for the suggestion.) • Added a test for checking whether the object returend by COMPUTE- DISCRIMINATING-FUNCTION can be funcalled and whether the second parameter to SET-FUNCALLABLE-INSTANCE-FUNCTION can be a 'real' closure. • Added a test for checking whether one can use one's own :ALLOCATION kinds. • Added a test for checking whether a generic function without any methods defined can still be called. • Added a test for checking whether a DEFMETHOD form can have multiple qualifiers. • Added more fine-grained tests for checking SLOT-XXX-USING-CLASS functions. • Added a test whether REINITIALIZE-INSTANCE on a class metaobject calls FINALIZE-INHERITANCE. Luckily, all implementations pass that test. Closer to MOP 0.3: • The supported Common Lisp implementations improved with regard to their support for the MOP, with varying extent. This required a few changes here and there. • The lack of extensible :ALLOCATION kinds in Allegro Common Lisp, as specified in AMOP, is fixed. Thanks to John Foderaro for giving me the important hint on how to solve this. ContextL 0.2: • When rebinding special places, it is now checked whether they actually contain special symbols, so this is now a safe operation. This can be tweaked to omit the check for improved performance. • Changing a non-special slot to a special slot in an already existing class is now also supported in Allegro Common Lisp from 7.0 on. Thanks to Duane Rettig for fixing the related bug in Allegro and thereby enabling this feature. • Improved parsing of layered methods: The :METHOD option in DEFINE- LAYERED-FUNCTION is now parsed and processed correctly. Furthermore, one can now optionally give a name to the otherwise anonymous layer parameter. This is useful for calling CALL-NEXT-METHOD with changed parameters. • Added a new namespace for layers. Before, their names could accidentally clash with class names. • Added a number of performance tweaks and better error messages. • Fixed a few bugs. Special thanks go to John Foderaro, Duane Rettig and Christophe Rhodes (in alphabetical order) for exceptional help. Pascal -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium

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[eurolisp] New PGP Key
by Thomas F. Burdick 24 Jan '06

24 Jan '06

I have a new pgp public key. It's up on my web space here: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~tfb/pubkey.asc It's been two or three years since I forgot the password to the key you all may have. It hasn't been compromised, just forgotten. All this talk about gpg and asdf-install, and an impending Ltk release, got me off my butt to make a new one. It's only for signing Lisp packages -- if for some reason you want to send me encrypted e-mail, ask me through an appropriate channel for the key I use for that. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (Darwin) mQGiBEPWo5URBADtqt4KaBHipP8YetDju0JeNRUyFNbJ3v+tIxiHRbjKIRhm/SjZ IHZ+isA4m+ygNEcbyBkRqk3yzYXur6EaIoL9tN6MBvlbH8r06i0AQFCOkoMUovJc Sm0q0KkMXA4a63Pi3vIfrd0ivRq70/lpliLuD5Y83jzCJK5ZsteikZQfywCgzNdv jc4YubXIpf2fcHAF/J4eD+ED/1Q9+sSmybgWbdRgv2W1bTv2Bk0OgwuPse/BuxcR gFaBxxxnW+zi+64YLBKBiRlptGri75ivUoenQ2exC78YcKicmhWFS4uWXGl1rOx0 RDCfV/ZLreCCKnxObeFac4UO/qWRRgHxXkDbVVe2IeNTo/SJngfG7petBJyX37eg zQq9BACa0gYCU79bXu5eLTwPlEda/K+BWCz927O/f9wfsEKK4QXsh+nwIuExCRPH 57hWqr/Vz+/kS/GcdGuasY7RUwrnYGHJBWr4FAThfSRD3rGk6Gf63w4lw6UVikZQ ueuue5qWslsoSO3vRRon9LMW72Upg4leZkB//8kdr7jTwaevhLRJVGhvbWFzIEYu IEJ1cmRpY2sgKG9ubHkgZm9yIHNpZ25pbmcgc29mdHdhcmUpIDx0ZmIrbGlzcEBv Y2YuYmVya2VsZXkuZWR1PohfBBMRAgAfBQJD1qOVAhsDBwsJCAcDAgEDFQIDAxYC AQIeAQIXgAAKCRCXZHBWUNC09swxAJ4hB2KM0b8GZByDWOc9EWfxWWVdiQCglqKs FG3bQmQV8BYYFCL+nhlHLWu5Ag0EQ9aj4hAIAKEcpVfCDC+RogV6IrnzYdzGj/a0 nqUpXgj1v/N2oJxfzn6lazoTl2LREjG+ADD4abV//kAJTnfmfES9gJpQsK0zX9gc vcNhiUOcp6TkqmpOqwN5xf+rjBQsBjAi9cQlqCwoWXRWJbt8m2td/Zp3ZoRk8JPq Vg1wi+3TTOYOl90GIttQVe3in5HWLR0EYvP4cciESUs8R/XWmSzJgFrHgs2qF093 iYwqf0KaN4hmYtXw4Qb6lA0Kv/hdskX4jBYEto9xk4XoUO4qSuCltISmTLp1RdGh zmWQCIy6j3j723SAtGrjsQVpZKy2Fcew8iyDqcOPWt5iaMY9R5pc08QI7wsAAwYH /2PrnCMxKHQk5rrH7xciO5ItSrVBtx34GEqq2rD5gAg7clG9ILFbj8zZEl5qO/FQ 6Ygwowy9cI5ck9l6hBHTgjo2Ju3aEKJoHTeKPpdKGidPpPjEiCFCf/mwqPkt6Qcu a0XKJheahgWht2C4AY41yG0vJPv2PikpVwM4YklbEYgsCSJuxyo9Mv99FtOONOVQ KKxM3qGPH4sGD7Oqp7iwfEtEpjatIp8M4TtsgU0yxsX0Bozv9Y9fGh0JUJYW+VoW VivSYstiPQMPCZWesEFUCBePVzcTHvKXN+x4KI76GjitJws+gzHd7gC0dmflK9oK 88vMO5TgGeZdSUbbwLrrWteISQQYEQIACQUCQ9aj4gIbDAAKCRCXZHBWUNC09u7L AJ4yFU8CF1xtUgE13GgchzpzDq5nDgCgk5T0byuJnLbLIV2P2wNRpVe7dEE= =q8NF -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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[eurolisp] European Common Lisp Meeting 2006
by Arthur Lemmens 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

************************************* * European Common Lisp Meeting 2006 * * Hamburg, Germany * * April 30 * ************************************* Edi Weitz and Arthur Lemmens are proud to announce the European Common Lisp Meeting 2006. The meeting will consist of a Sunday full of talks, with optional dinners on Saturday and Sunday evening. More details (price, exact location, registration) will be announced soon, but please reserve the weekend of April 29/30 in your agenda now! The following talks will be given on Sunday, April 30: * Jans Aasman Franz, Inc (Oakland, California, USA) AllegroGraph: a large scale graph database applied to the Semantic Web and telecom fraud detection * James Anderson Ravenpack International (Marbella, Spain) Lisp tools for time series computations * Marco Antoniotti Department of Informatics, Systems and Communications, Università Milano-Bicocca (Milan, Italy) NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group (New York, USA) GOALIE * Martin Cracauer ITA Software (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) Common Lisp in a high-performance search environment * Klaus Harbo Mu Aps (Farum, Denmark) cl-muproc: Erlang-inspired multiprocessing in Common Lisp * Arthur Lemmens Independent consultant (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Rucksack: a flexible, lightweight, open source persistence library * David McClain Avisere Sensor Group, Inc. (Tucson, Arizona, USA) SigLab: a Lisp-based signal and image processing and modeling facility * Jim Newton, Thomas F. Burdick, Peter Herth, Björn Lindberg Cadence Design Systems GmbH (Munich, Germany) The PCMan meta version control system: Common Lisp from top to bottom Looking forward to meeting you in Hamburg, Edi Weitz & Arthur Lemmens

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[eurolisp] [CfP] Dynamic Languages Day @ Brussels
by Pascal Costanza 12 Jan '06

12 Jan '06

Dynamic Languages Day @ Vrije Universiteit Brussel ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday, February 13, 2006, VUB Campus Etterbeek The VUB (Programming Technology Lab, System and Software Engineering Lab), ULB (deComp) and the Belgian Association for Dynamic Languages (BADL) are very pleased to invite you to a whole day of presentations about the programming languages Self, Smalltalk and Common Lisp by experts in these languages. Besides some introductory material for each language, the reflective facilities in the respective programming environments will be highlighted. The presentations will be especially interesting for people with good knowledge about current mainstream object-oriented languages like Java, C# and C++ who want to get a deeper understanding about the expressive power of Self, Smalltalk and Common Lisp. In order to prepare the ground for these presentations, Professor Viviane Jonckers will introduce the day by an overview of the benefits of teaching dynamic languages to undergraduate students in computer science. She will especially discuss the specific advantages of using Scheme as an introductory language instead of the more widely employed Java language. Attendance is free and open to the public. Please make sure to register for the event by sending an e-mail to Pascal Costanza (pascal.costanza(a)vub.ac.be) so we can plan ahead. The number of places will be limited according to the exact location of the event and will be allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis. Watch the website for the exact schedule, location and any news at http:// prog.vub.ac.be/events/2005/BADL/DLD/dld.html. Abstracts of the Talks ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Scheme as an introductory language (Viviane Jonckers) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The VUB has a rich history in dynamic programming language teaching and research. Ever since the late 80's, compulsory courses on Lisp and Smalltalk have played an important role in the last two years of the computer science curriculum. Since the early 90's, this role was further intensified by selecting Scheme as the introductory course in the first year and by promoting Scheme as the lingua franca for most courses in the first two years. Professor Jonckers' introductory talk to the dynamic languages day explains how this early exposure to the dynamic paradigm is the seed that gives students the skills to fully grasp and appreciate the more advanced dynamic paradigms (such as Lisp, CLOS, Smalltalk and Self) in subsequent courses of their computer science training. Self (Ellen Van Paesschen) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Self is a prototype-based object-oriented programming language where everything is an object and all manipulation of objects is initiated through message sending. A prototype-based language eschews classes and allows object creation ex-nihilo or by cloning prototypes. Self resembles Smalltalk in both its syntax and semantics. Other characteristics of Self are delegation (object-centered inheritance), parent sharing and child sharing (multiple inheritance), and dynamic parent modification. Further the Self environment includes a powerful mechanism for reflective meta-programming based on mirror objects. The Self group were also the first to introduce traits objects that gather shared and reusable behavior between objects in order to program in a more efficient and structured way. After a brief introduction to the highly interactive Self environment the language's basics and its syntax and semantics are presented. Next the most important advanced features such as mirrors and dynamic parent modification are illustrated. Smalltalk (Johan Brichau, Roel Wuyts) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Smalltalk is class-based object-oriented programming language. Everything in Smalltalk is an object and these objects communicate through messages. The Smalltalk language itself offers only very few programming constructs and is thus easy to learn and grasp. Therefore, the expressive power of Smalltalk lies in its huge library of frameworks, which includes an extensive metaobject protocol that enables powerful dynamic (runtime) reflection. Furthermore, perhaps one of the most significant advantages of Smalltalk outside of the language itself is that software development is a truly dynamic experience. The Smalltalk environment features the incremental development of an application where there is no strict separation between development and execution cycles, leading to an interactive and dynamic development process. Besides a short introduction to the Smalltalk programming language, this presentation will focus on the dynamic reflective facilities of Smalltalk. We will demonstrate the power of its metaobject protocol through a number of tools that extensively rely on it. Furthermore, we will provide some insight in the dynamic nature of Smalltalk development through a live demonstration. Generic Functions and the CLOS Metaobject Protocol (Pascal Costanza) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) is unique in two ways. * In most OOP languages, methods belong to classes and are invoked by sending messages. In CLOS, methods belong to generic functions instead of classes, and those generic functions select and execute the correct method according to the types of the arguments they receive. * The CLOS Metaobject Protocol (MOP) specifies how its essential building blocks are to be implemented in CLOS itself. This allows extending its object model with metaclasses that change important aspects of CLOS for a well-defined scope. This presentation introduces these two notions. The code for an interpreter for generic functions that performs selection and execution of methods will be developed live during the presentation. This will be followed by a discussion how that code can be extended to introduce, for example, multimethods and AOP-style advices, and a sketch how generic functions are implemented efficiently in the "real" world. In the second part, the extensibility of the CLOS MOP will be illustrated by implementing - live - the (hashtable-based) Python object model as a metaclass. Other practical extensions based on the CLOS MOP are also sketched, like object-relational mappings, interfaces to foreign-language objects, and domain-specific annotations in classes. Biographies ~~~~~~~~~~~ Viviane Jonckers received a master degree in Computer Science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1983 and a Ph.D. degree in Sciences from the same university in 1987. Since 1987 she is a professor both in the Computer Science Department of the faculty of Sciences as in the Computer Science group of the Engineering Faculty. Currently, she is the director of the System and Software Engineering Lab. Her current research interests are in integrated software development methods with a focus on component based software development and aspect oriented software development. She participated in and has been project manager of several national and international R&D projects. Roel Wuyts is professor at the University Libre de Bruxelles, where he leads the deComp group. His fields of interest are logic meta programming, forms of reflection and language design. On the side he also dabbles in development environments. Quite a lot his development is done in Smalltalk, extensively using the reflective facilities in that language to do research in language symbiosis, development environments and for rapid programming in gneral. From the moment he realized that dynamicity was what he really liked in all of his favourite programming languages (Smalltalk, Prolog and Scheme), he has been trying to grow the dynamic languages field again. Part of this endavour was the organization of the first Dynamic Language Symposium, a symposium co-organized with OOPSLA'2005 in San Diego. Johan Brichau currently holds a postdoc position at the Laboratoire d'Informatique Fondamentale de Lille (LIFL). He is also associated with the Programming Technology Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he obtained a Ph.D. degree in Computer Sciences in 2005. Johan's research is focusing on the use of metaprogramming in the context of generative programming techniques and aspect-oriented programming languages. To this extent, he has been extensively using the Smalltalk metaobject protocol for the creation and development of (generative) logic metaprogramming techniques as well as aspect- oriented language extensions to Smalltalk. Pascal Costanza has a Ph.D. degree from the University of Bonn, Germany. His past involvements include specification and implementation of the languages Gilgul and Lava, and the design and application of the JMangler framework for load-time transformation of Java class files. He has also implemented ContextL, the first programming language extension for Context-oriented Programming based on CLOS, and aspect-oriented extensions for CLOS, which all heavily rely on the CLOS MOP. He is furthermore the initiator and lead of Closer, an open source project that provides a compatibility layer for the CLOS MOP across multiple Common Lisp implementations. Ellen Van Paesschen obtained a master degree in computer science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2000. Currently she is a Ph.D. student at the Programming Technology Lab. Ellen's research is focusing on using dynamic and prototype-based languages for model- driven development and round-trip engineering (RTE). She has created a research prototype of a dynamic prototype-based RTE environment in Self which is the main implementation language in her research. This environment differs from other existing tools at the level of synchronisation, run-time objects and constraint enforcement steered from an analysis model. Her other interests include (the analysis phase during) software engineering and role modelling. -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium

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[eurolisp] organization of 22C3 socializing
by Clemens Fruhwirth 29 Dec '05

29 Dec '05

Well fine! There were plenty of replies to my socializing call :). So, I put up a wiki page for a small amount of organization. Please add yourself to http://wiki.alu.org/22C3 when you are interesting in having a drink and a chat about Lisp on one evening during the conference. Please check this page after 2 weeks to see, which date was chosen. You can also reach this page by going to wiki.alu.org -> Events -> 22C3 in case you don't remember the exact spelling :) -- Fruhwirth Clemens - http://clemens.endorphin.org for robots: sp4mtrap(a)endorphin.org

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[eurolisp] Socializing at 22C3 27-30.12 Berlin?
by Clemens Fruhwirth 12 Dec '05

12 Dec '05

I'm going to attend the 22C3 in Berlin 27.12-30.12. https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/wiki/22C3_Public_Wiki It's not related to Lisp in any way but as both, Lisp and their definition of "Hacker", include "significant affinity to efficiency", I hoped that the intersection of Lisp coders and 22C3 attendees would be non-nil. Regards, -- Fruhwirth Clemens - http://clemens.endorphin.org for robots: sp4mtrap(a)endorphin.org

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