lone VS Mezzano

I made something somewhat close to that: a freestanding lisp. It targets the Linux kernel directly. No libc.

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone

> register scanning isn't portable

Certainly not but it wasn't particularly hard to implement either. I just wrote some inline assembly for every architecture. Here's my programming language's x86_64 and aarch64 implementations:

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone/blob/master/architecture/x...

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone/blob/master/architecture/a...

Not too long ago, a project of mine was shared here on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38126052

In that thread I wrote:

> I have this vision in my mind: embedding lone modules into sections of the lone ELF and shipping it out. Zero dependencies, self-contained.

I've been working on that since that day. Proud to say I've gotten it to work and thought I'd make it the subject of my first Show HN. Some free software projects gained features along the way too.

The link is to an article with a proper demonstration, technical details and what happened in the past few weeks.

The complete repository itself can be found here:

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone

I've completely reorganized it since the last thread. Would be very happy if you guys tried it out.

To test my programming language. It's a freestanding lisp interpreter that doesn't link to libc. I wrote the code that handles the environment variables and in order to test it I needed full control over the program's inputs including its environment. The env utility provides this control by emptying the environment and setting only the variables I specify, solving 90% of the problem. Only thing I still can't control is argv[0]. With this new feature upstreamed, my test suite will be complete.

Here's the code if you'd like to take a look:

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone#testing

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone/blob/master/scripts/test.b...

> only to be confronted with the notorious 'incompatible glibc version error'. It's super annoying.

I started making my own freestanding Linux Lisp because of this exact issue. It's nowhere near as performant as something like SBCL but it's small and once compiled has no dependencies and will literally run on any Linux.

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone

I'm taking a break from this project but I plan to add a feature where I can put a Lisp script into the ELF itself so I can just copy it with the scripts included.

The kernel just puts the data contiguously on the stack. Obtaining pointers to them can seem somewhat magical if you're writing a nolibc program but I wouldn't call it horrible.

I implemented it for my programming language with some rather simple assembly code:

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone/blob/master/arch/x86_64.c#...

https://github.com/lone-lang/lone/blob/master/arch/aarch64.c...

Have you made or plan to make any contributions to Mezzano (https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano) or are you mainly interested in seeing how far you can take this thing on your own?

>> except building compilers and OSes

SBCL is written in Lisp, yes? Except the runtime, which is C + asm.

I've heard people wrote some OSes in the past, like Genera. Or if you prefer recent attempt, try https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano. Never tried it, though.

No need to.

Not at all. See mezzano for a notable recent example of an OS written entirely in a dynamic language.

So..

"Why do you want to make Lisp more popular? If you were sucessful, what would be different in the world, and why is that desirable to you?"

Normally at this point I'd listen to the response, and ask more questions based on that. That would wind up with a very, very deep thread, so I'll break a cardinal rule and pre-guess at some answers.

This kind of question comes up pretty frequently. In many cases, I suspect the motivation behind the question is "Wow! Here's this cool tool I've discovered. I want to make something really useful with it. I want to do it as part of a community effort; share my excitement with others, share in their excitement, and know that what I'm making is useful because others find it desirable and are excited by it." The field could be cooking, sports, old machine tools, tiny homes, or demo scene. Its the fundemental driver for most content on HN, YouTube, Instructables, and such. It is a Good Thing.

If that is your motivator, then my suggestion is to find something that bugs you and fix it. You've already decided you're only interested in code, not other aspects. You said you preferred vim, but the emacs ecosystem has a very rich set of sharp edges that need filing off, and a rich set of tools with which to attack them.

One example: even after 50 years there's no open IDE which allows you to easily globally rename a Lisp identifier. I don't know about LispWorks or other proprietary environments, but you can't in emacs or vim do a right-click on "foo" in "(defun foo ()...)" and select a command which automatically renames it in all invocations. [Queue lots of "but you can..." replies here.] I don't think vim is up to the task of doing this internally. It would be possible in emacs; but would require a huge effort with lots of help from other people. If you emerged alive from that rabbit warren you'd join the company of Certified "How Hard Could it Be?" Mad Scientists such as Dr. "I just want to draw molecules" Meister [1] and "Wouldn't an OS in Lisp be Cool" Froggey [2].

[1] https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp

[2] Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

You might want to look at Mezzano which is an operation system written in Common Lisp https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

I haven’t tried it since moving to M1/ARM, but it is cool.