cl-lsp VS generic-cl

How this compares to using cl-lsp[1] with Neovim?

[1]: https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp

Does this count? https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp

It's a great article. Since then, we have more tools and resources so we can enhance it:

Pick and Editor

The article is right that you can start with anything. Just `load` your .lisp file in the REPL. But even in Vim, Sublime Text, and Atom [and also VSCode] you can get pretty good to very good support. See https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (also Lem, a CL editor that works for other languages, Jupyter notebooks, Eclipse (basic support) and LispWorks (proprietary, advanced graphical tools).

> if anyone is interested in making a Common Lisp LSP language server, I think it would be a hugely useful contribution to the community.

Here's a new project used for VSCode: https://github.com/nobody-famous/alive-lsp There's also https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp

Other resources

I already linked to it, but the Cookbook (to which I contribute) is a useful reference to see code and get things done, quickly. https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/

While I'm at it, my first shameless plug: after my tutorials written for the Cookbook and my blog, I wanted to do more. Explain, structure, demo real-world Common Lisp. I'm creating this course (there are some free videos): https://www.udemy.com/course/common-lisp-programming/?coupon... (ongoing -50% coupon for June).

Web Development

See the Cookbook, and the awesome list (see below). We have many libraries, you still have to code for things taken for granted in other big frameworks. I have some articles on my blog.

We have new very cool kids in town, especially CLOG, that is like a GUI for the browser. Check it out: https://github.com/rabbibotton/clog

Game Development

See again the awesome-cl list. And the Kandria game, in the making, all done in CL: https://kandria.com/ (it just got accepted for a Swiss grant, congratulations).

Unit Testing

We have even more test frameworks since 2018! And some are actually good O_o

Projects

To create a full-featured CL project in one command, look no further, here's my (shameless plug again) project skeleton: https://github.com/vindarel/cl-cookieproject you'll find the equivalent for a web project, lighter alternatives in the README, and a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFc513MJjos&feature=youtu.be

Libraries

He doesn't mention this list, what a shame: https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl => the CL ecosystem is probably bigger than you thought. Sincerely, only recently, great packages appeared: CLOG, cl-gserver (actors concurrency), 40ants-doc, official CL support on OVH through Platform.sh, great editor add-ons (Slite test runner, Slime-star modules…), Coalton 1.0 (Haskell-like ML on top of CL), April v1.0 (APL in CL), a Qt 5 "library" (still hard to install), many more… (Clingon CLI args parser, Lish, a Lisp Shell in the making, the Consfigurator deployment service, generic-cl)…

His list is OK, I'd pick another HTTP client and another JSON library (new ones since 2018 too), but that's a detail.

BTW, see also a list of companies: https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

Community

We are also on Discord: https://discord.gg/hhk46CE and on Libera Chat.

Implementations

CLASP (CL for C++ on LLVM) reached its v1.0, congrats. https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp/releases/tag/1.0.0

If you’re already a vs-code user, then I get that. And the facilities do exist to do Common Lisp in vs-code: https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp

Third hit on DuckDuckGo https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp

You mean like cl-lsp, or the Alive Visual Studio Code extension? These are admittedly works in progress, but I'm sure you'd be very welcome to contribute since you care so much about it!

By the way, there is already https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp that provides some LSP support for Common Lisp. I believe there is no need to support LSP from asdf side ... you just need to write a bridge for it. I know the author personally and since he surely does not use VS code himself, I don't know that was his motivation in making this one.

for those wanting generic +, equality and comparison in CL, there's a nice library: https://alex-gutev.github.io/generic-cl/

If performance is not a concern, then you can create CLOS classes corresponding to vec3 or mat44, and dispatch the appropriate functions from the generic-cl project by specializing on them.

> And Lisp is almost uniquely able to handle transitions to later standards as I described above. You don't actually have to forfeit backwards compatibility entirely or at all if the changes are handled by moving to a new default base package. :cl-user/:cl become :cl##-user/:cl##

Go use cl21[0] if you care for this sort of thing.

> more generic functions would open up more interesting developments later

generic-cl[1]. But in a prefix-oriented language, I just don't see this as particularly important.

> you don't necessarily want to bless a particular concurrency model

You do[2]; this is one of the notable deficiencies in the cl standard that really bites, today. It is being worked on.

0. http://cl21.org/

1. https://github.com/alex-gutev/generic-cl

2. https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2004/HPL-2004-209.pdf

So, the article is harsh on CL: YMMV. Also, your goal may vary: I want to build and ship (web) applications, and so far Julia doesn't look attractive to me (at all). Super fast incremental development, build a standalone binary and deploy on my VPS or ship an Electron window? done. Problem(s) solved, let's focus on my app please.

The author doesn't mention a few helpful things:

- editor support: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... Emacs is first class, Portacle is an Emacs easy to install (3 clicks), Vim, Atom support is (was?) very good, Sublime Text seems good (it has an interactive debugger with stack frame inspection), VSCode sees good work underway, the Alive extension is new, usable but hard to install yet, LispWorks is proprietary and is more like Smalltalk, with many graphical windows to inspect your running application, Geany has simple and experimental support, Eclipse has basic support, Lem is a general purpose editor written in CL, it is Emacs-like and poorely documented :( we have Jupyter notebooks and simpler terminal-based interactive REPLs: cl-repl is like ipython.

So, one could complain five years ago easily about the lack of editor support, know your complaint should be more evolved than a Emacs/Vim dichotomy.

- package managers: Quicklisp is great, very slick and the ecosystem is very stable. When/if you encounter its limitations, you can use: Ultralisp, a Quicklisp distribution that ships every 5 minutes (but it doesn't check that all packages load correctly together), Qlot is used for project-local dependencies, where you pin each one precisely, CLPM is a new package manager that fixes some (all?) Quicklisp limitations

> [unicode, threading, GC…] All of these features are left to be implemented by third-party libraries

this leads to think that no implementation implements unicode or threading support O_o

> most of the language proper is not generic

mention generic-cl? https://github.com/alex-gutev/generic-cl/ (tried quickly, not intensively)

Documentation: fair points, but improving etc. Example of a new doc generator: https://40ants.com/doc/

Also I'd welcome a discussion about Coalton (Haskell-like type system on top of CL).

Does generic-cl work for you? In recent months, u/alex-gutev worked on it to separate it out into smaller subsystems.

Compared to generic-cls equality generic here: https://github.com/alex-gutev/generic-cl/blob/master/src/comparison/equality.lisp

Thanks for sharing. I'm planning to use it in static-dispatch to further optimize generic function calls in generic-cl. It's also used in the lisp-polymorph project, work in progress not yet completed, which aims to provide an extensible generic interface, though not based on generic functions, to functions in the Common Lisp standard, like generic-cl however built from the ground up with performance and optimization and performance in mind.

Release 0.5 adds a specialized implementation for SBCL which leverages the compiler's type inference engine, using DEFTRANSFORM, to allow for generic function inlining in a much broader range of scenarios. Any generic function call for which the types of the arguments can be determined by SBCL, can now be inlined by static-dispatch. This means even generic function calls with arguments consisting of complex expressions can be inlined. This also provides a performance boost for generic-cl where theoretically on SBCL, generic-cl:= should be equivalent in performance to cl:= in most cases where the type of the argument can be vaguely inferred by SBCL.

If you want to regain performance, add-in type declarations, cl-generic will inline its functions: https://github.com/alex-gutev/generic-cl/#optimization

This example makes me think of generic-cl: https://github.com/alex-gutev/generic-cl/#add-nary