[Ecls-list] LISP shell based on ECL

[Goffioul Michael]

> Cool work! I assume most of the programming had to be done in .NET?

All the GUI is done in .NET and embedded into ECL (and not the other
way around). However, there's also a LISP part to define the
communications
channels between the LISP REPL (which runs in a separate thread) and the
shell window, based on gray streams, and to implement all the LISP-aware
operations like symbol/pathname autocompletion, bytecoded functions
calltip.
I expect the LISP part to grow significantly while adding LISP specific
features.

> Can it open additional windows to, say, present debugging 
> information or dumping a disassembled function?

For the time being, debugging is quite limited. I re-implemented a REPL
loop, largely based on the top.lsp code (here I notice a "problem" when
you want to overload things in compiled code, see below). The current
debugger only allows you to quit it, but I expect to add more useful
features like meaningful backtraces...
Nevertheless, I would say that it could do whatever you want as long as
you implement it :-) Using RDNZL, you have a complete control on the GUI
from LISP. If ECL can produce nice debugging information, putting it
into
a window is easy. This explains my previous mails about function/macro
declaration info and argument/value mapping.

Michael.