Ala'a Mohammad wrote on Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 07:45:29PM +0400:
Hi,
I'm continually learning Common-lisp and trying to find the best style that suites me better. I've tried 'an imager' style (cooking a an image with all required libraries loaded when required), and 'a filer' style (loading files or systems each time I fire-up a CL implementation). I'm interested to hear what others use CL. How do they manage day to day work? how do their preferred style mesh into their production pipeline (coding, debugging, deployment and maintenance)? and what makes them prefer one way over another or the mix if applicable?
I'm an imager. Even my dotfiles are "converted" into an image. When I log into a new machine I run a script to set up my dotfiles and the Lisp part of it loads my personal libraries, changes settings the way I like and then saves an image.
The major reason is that it's much faster to load the result. I also make it shut up for good so that starting this image doesn't have any output except a (customized) prompt.
It also safeguards you against somebody messing with the OS-installed Lisp.
Martin