Big thanks for the replies! I'll set about cleaning up my SBCL install and then attempting to install McClim from CVS now, but please notify me if it's a better idea to install SBCL from CVS, too.
Regards, Oliver Uvman
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 06:23, Andy Hefner ahefner@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Oliver Uvman oliver.uvman@gmail.com wrote:
Hello!
I'm trying to follow the guide on http://mcclim.cliki.net/McCLIM%2BSBCL for installing McClim, but when I do (asdf-install:install :mcclim) I get an error, which I tried to accept and continue the install from, but the errors just keep coming after that so I thought I'd ask.
Short answer: Follow Stas's advice, and additionally check out the latest version of McCLIM from CVS rather than using asdf-install.
Longer answer:
The advice on the wiki is a bit out of date. These days, nine out of ten lispers agree that neither asdf-install, common-lisp-controller, nor Debian/Ubuntu-packaged lisp implementations should be used by anyone, at any time, for any purpose. McCLIM itself should certainly be checked out from CVS (or a git mirror) rather than using asdf-install, because the last released version of McCLIM is quite old. CLC, foisted upon unwitting victims by the Debian lisp packages, may not be intrinsically broken, but few people use it, fewer understand it, and it has earned a reputation for breaking things and causing headaches while offering no real benefit to most users.
The error I'm getting is:
...
for "file /usr/share/common-lisp/source/slime/swank-loader.lisp" ; {BF565E1}>: ; package "CLC" not found
...
I tried (asdf-install:install :clc) but there doesn't seem to be a package with that name. I know it stands for common-lisp-controller, and I have it apt-getted on my system (Ubuntu Lucid x86). Anybody know what the problem is?
Some background: Swank is the backend half of SLIME, written in CL and loaded into your lisp process, which emacs talks to over a socket. It contains several functions which are useful to McCLIM for doing things which can't be implemented portably, and as it's been ported to every CL of interest and virtually everyone can be expected to already have it on their machines, it makes a handy compatibility layer. CLC is a strange thing which, as I understand it, is used by the Debian CL packages for its ability to compile systems to FASLs and copy those to /usr where any user will be able to load them, so that each user isn't forced to compile everything themselves (and deal with the problem of not having write permission to /usr where the source code is installed). You can imagine how such an arrangement might not appeal to someone who wants the option of easily hacking on any and all components in their lisp environment, and as such most "upstream" hackers, so to speak, reject the CLC-based environment and install everything from source, rendering them unable to help when buggy interactions involving CLC crop up. :)
The version of SLIME provided by your Linux distribution appears to have been modified with the expectation that CLC will always be loaded before attempting to load Swank. This must hold true for however they've arranged SLIME to work, but not for the (admittedly uncommon) case of CL software that wants to load Swank independently. Loading CLC manually before attempting to load McCLIM may well fix the issue, but I don't know how to do that.