[Ecls-list] Embedding ECL in a portable app

[worm]

> I'm writing an application (a game actually) that I'm
> going to have a lisp interpreter embedded. I'll be
> defining my own interfaces to manipulate the GUI and
> game engine and game objects.
> 
> It uses the Crystal Space library, and is portable to
> Windows (using mingw) and Linux.
> 
> What I'd like to know is, if ECL is suitable for this
> kind of environment. ie. can it compile under mingw (I
> would be writing stubs for stdio stuff to redirect
> console I/O to the GUI and file I/O to CS's vfs). 

Your project sounds interesting and it is the type of applications for 
which ECLS is oriented. Regarding the portability issue you will find 
the following

1) ECLS will compile under many unices with little change. No change 
required for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD or Cygwin+Windows.

2) ECLS configuration process requires a unix shell to work. This could 
be fixed in a few days, though.

3) ECLS is based on GNU Multiprecision library 3.1, which as far as I 
know does not compile on mingw -- or I know of no port.

So the only obstacle is (3). I tried myself to port ECLS to mingw but I 
could not go beyond this point because of the multiprecision library, 
which is an essential part of the environment. If anybody can find out 
a good replacement, which is portable and has a reasonable license, I, 
or any volunteer, could try to integrate it as an alternative backend 
for the bignums library (That would be an easy job, even for someone 
which is not very familiar with ECLS).

Juanjo