GENERAL INFORMATION =================== Armed Bear Common Lisp is an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp that runs in a Java virtual machine. It compiles its code to Java byte code. LICENSE ======= Armed Bear Common Lisp is distributed under the GNU General Public License with classpath exception (described below). A copy of GNU General Public License (GPL) is included in this distribution, in the file COPYING. Linking this software statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on this software. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole combination. As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give you permission to link this software with independent modules to produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this software. If you modify this software, you may extend this exception to your version of the software, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from your version. RUNNING FROM BINARY RELEASE =========================== After you have downloaded a binary release archive unpack it into its own directory. To run ABCL directly from this directory, make sure Java (version 1.5 or up) is in your shell's path. Then issue following command cmd$ java -jar abcl.jar which should result in output like the following Armed Bear Common Lisp 0.19.1 Java 1.6.0_14 Sun Microsystems Inc. Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM Low-level initialization completed in 0.9 seconds. Startup completed in 2.294 seconds. Type ":help" for a list of available commands. CL-USER(1): BUILDING FROM SOURCE RELEASE ============================ There are three ways to build ABCL from the source release with the preferred (and most tested way) is to being to use the Ant build tool: * Use the Ant build tool for Java environments. * Use the Netbeans 6.x IDE to open ABCL as a project. * Bootstrap ABCL using a Common Lisp implementation. Supported implementations for this process: SBCL, CMUCL, OpenMCL, Allegro CL, LispWorks or CLISP. In all cases you need a Java 5 or later JDK (JDK 1.5 and 1.6 have been tested). Just the JRE isn't enough, as you need the Java compiler ('javac') to compile the Java source of the ABCL implementation. Using Ant --------- Download a binary distribution [Ant version 1.7.1 or greater][1]. Unpack the files somewhere convenient, ensuring that the 'ant' (or 'ant.bat' under Windows) executable is in your path and executable. [1]: http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi Then simply executing unix$ ant or cmd$ ant.bat from the directory containing this README file will create an executable wrapper ('abcl' under UNIX, 'abcl.bat' under Windows). Use this wrapper to start ABCL. Using NetBeans -------------- Obtain and install the [Netbeans IDE][2]. One should be able to open the ABCL directory as a project in the Netbeans 6.x application, whereupon the usual build, run, and debug targets as invoked in the GUI are available. [2]: http://netbeans.org/downloads/ Building from Lisp ------------------ Building from a Lisp is the most venerable and untested way of building ABCL. It produces a "non-standard" version of the distribution that doesn't share build instructions with the previous two methods, but it still may be of interest to those who absolutely don't want to know anything about Java. First, copy the file 'customizations.lisp.in' to customization.lisp', in the directory containing this README file, editing to suit your situation, paying attention to the comments in the file. The critical step is to have Lisp special variable '*JDK*' point to the root of the Java Development Kit. Underneath the directory referenced by the value of '*JDK*' there should be an exectuable Java compiler in 'bin/javac' ('bin/java.exe' under Windows). Then, one may either use the 'build-from-lisp.sh' shell script or load the necessary files into your Lisp image by hand. ** Using the 'build-from-lisp.sh' script Under UNIX-like systems, you may simply invoke the 'build-from-lisp.sh' script as './build-from-lisp.sh ', e.g. unix$ ./build-from-lisp.sh sbcl After a successful build, you may use 'abcl.bat' on Windows or 'abcl' on Unix to start ABCL. Note that this wrappers contain absolute paths, so you'll need to edit them if you move things around after the build. If you're developing on ABCL, you may want to use unix$ ./build-from-lisp.sh --clean=nil to not do a full rebuild. In case of failure in the javac stage, you might try this: unix$ ./build-from-lisp.sh --full=t --clean=t --batch=nil This invokes javac separately for each .java file, which avoids running into limitations on command line length (but is a lot slower). ** Building from another Lisp by hand There is also an ASDF definition in 'abcl.asd' for the BUILD-ABCL which can be used to load the necessary Lisp definitions, after which CL-USER> (build-abcl:build-abcl :clean t :full t) will build ABCL. If ASDF isn't present, simply LOAD the 'customizations.lisp' and 'build-abcl.lisp' files to achieve the same effect as loading the ASDF definition. BUGS ==== A lot of (renewed) energy has been spent to make ABCL a compliant and practically useable Common Lisp implementation. Because of this, ABCL 0.19.1 now fails only 29 out of 21702 tests in the ANSI CL test suite. Next to that, the fail count of the Maxima test suite has been reduced to only 5 - rounding errors. ABCL's CLOS does not handle on-the-fly redefinition of classes correctly. Quite a bit of energy has been spent in versions 0.16.0 and 0.17.0 to improve CLOS performance. There is no support for the long form of DEFINE-METHOD-COMBINATION, and certain other required CLOS features are also missing. Enough CLOS is there to run ASDF2 and CL-PPCRE. There is no MOP worth mentioning. Patches to address any of the issues mentioned above will be gladly accepted. Please report problems to the development mailing list: armedbear-devel@common-lisp.net Have fun! On behalf of all ABCL development team and contributors, Erik Huelsmann March 20, 2010