I'm sorry, I hit send without finishing.
On 12/17/05, Andy Cristina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 12/17/05, Partap Davis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Is a .exe file absolutely required?
> > >
<snip>
> > I can understand that if you want to be able to interact with the
> > source...say for debugging, you need access to the entire environment.  But
> > what if you just want to package a binary for distribution?
> >
My understanding is that the problem is that lisp includes a function
called eval, which can in principle need access to all of the
language.  But you can certainly remove parts of environment you don't
need via a "tree shaker," which removes things your program does not
specifically use.  Lispworks has one of these, and Allegro probably
does too.

> > This kind of goes with the other thread about the standard library.
> > Somebody was mentioning that you would have to include the entire library
> > whether you used it or not.  This is not true for programs written in other
> > languages.  You either only link in the functions that are referenced in the
> > program, or dynamically link from a shared object file.
> >
I think in this case the problem was that a single .asd file was
proposed which would load all of the library.  I'm much more in favor
of the idea of just verifying that certain versions of libraries play
well together, and mirroring them somewhere and saying "This is the
library set we approve of" and giving the set a version number.  That
way you still only load the libraries you need, but you have an
assurance that you won't run into problems with different versions not
working together.

> > Is there something so fundamental to the lisp language that the entire
> > environment needs to be distributed with a (possible very simple) program?
> > I love the idea of the interactive environment when developing code, but for
> > distribution, it seems akin to not only leaving the debugging symbols in
> > place, but attaching a copy of the debugger and standard libraries as
> > well...
> >
In general, you are doing this.  If this isn't what you want, then you
need to use a tool that removes the parts you don't want included. 
The commercial lisps seem to have these tools, whereas the free lisps
don't.  But even so, a clisp distribution is only a couple of megs. 
Yes this is big for hello world, but is it really big compared to a
hello world with all C libraries statically linked?  I don't know how
big libc is.

> > Is there something I'm missing?  or is this just an issue with the various
> > free implementations that are available and not lisp in general?
> >

> > -partap
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> >
> >
> >
>
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