Lisp Machine Flavors for LFE

Long, long ago I did an implementation of MIT Lisp Machine Flavors for Portable Standard Lisp. This was a very interesting project but it is now all lost in antiquity.

When I mentioned to Duncan that I had done this he asked why not do it for LFE? After thinking it over I decided that this was definitely worth doing for many reasons:

• It was in itself a very interesting and powerful example of an OO system with many, many features.

• In many ways the Erlang/LFE system is very OS like in its nature and so resembles the Lisp Machine in being more like an implementation of a system with a language rather than just an implementation of a language. Of course Erlang is not lisp but with LFE we are definitely closer.

• It would definitely be a fun project.

So, LM flavors it is. There are many things from the LM lisp we can't do in LFE, for example mutable data and global variables, or are very dependent on the internals of the LM so it won't be an exact implementation, but I will do what I can.

One very interesting question when it starts working is how deeply we should try and integrate this into LFE. If we do make it part of the core LFE system it will influence a lot of other libraries and tools. Also there maybe other things from the LM we might want to include as well. We might end up with an LFE machine.

A link to the LM documentation and some other interesting links CADR lisp machine and Lisp machines

Robert

P.S. Defstruct is calling me.