lone VS jank

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...

There's an effort afoot to bring this to the Clojure world, with the lovely name jank: https://jank-lang.org

I also liked that reference since I had not heard of Jank before. It is a work in progress so I just added a calendar entry for 9 months from now to check it out. https://jank-lang.org/

There will be a lot of room for this, once I build out more of the features. In particular, there will be a lot of Clojure libraries which need to gain jank support. Clojure doesn't require "porting", so to speak, since it has a special .cljc file which can use reader conditionals to check the host that it's in (clj, cljs, cljr, jank, etc). So anywhere those libs are using Java interop, we'd need to wrap it to use native interop instead.

On the compiler and tooling itself, I have some open issues here: https://github.com/jank-lang/jank/issues

The vast majority of it is heavy C++ work, though. Outside of that, the biggest gains will come from time spent on packaging, distribution, and testing on various platforms.

And if none of that sounds interesting or applicable, don't worry. Just be sure to join the Slack channel and hang out with us. :)

On the top of using C++ for scripting, and related to the discussion of CERN's ROOT/Cling, I am developing a Clojure dialect on C++/LLVM called jank: https://jank-lang.org/

jank is a true Clojure, meaning you get interactive, REPL-based development and a whole stdlib of persistent, immutable data structures and functions to transform them. But it's also C++, so you can write inline C++ within your jank source, and interpolate jank values within that. You can link with existing native code using LLVM and you can embed jank into your existing native projects to use for scripting.

jank is pre-alpha, right now, and I've only been showing it to Clojure devs so far, but there's a huge audience of C++ devs which may be interested in introducing Clojure to their native code.

jank (https://jank-lang.org/) is a Clojure dialect on LLVM with C++ interop. In this talk, Jeaye will cover jank's use cases, some challenges around building a native Clojure dialect, and some insights about Clojure itself found only by spelunking deep into the Clojure compiler.

I wonder if Jank [1] could be such a Lisp? I haven't played around with it, but I really like the idea and would love to see it get more traction.

[1]: https://jank-lang.org/

This isn't usable yet, but in active development by the author, and looks promising: https://jank-lang.org/

Jank looks pretty legit: https://jank-lang.org/