[Ecls-list] [Announcement] ecl-readline V0.4.0

[Jason Aquilina]

On 08/03/10 11:57, Matthew Mondor wrote:
> Thanks for working on this.  I've been wondering though, is it license
> restriction (readline being GPL rather than LGPL) which prevents
> including it as part of official optional ECL contribs?  I know that
> this caused issues for other projects (at least BSD licensed ones).
>   
This is Juan's call as to whether to include it or not - I can do an
ecl-readline or ecl-editline version with the appropriate licensing if
Juan would like to have this as part of the ECL contribs.

> If that is the case, libedit is a BSD-licensed alternative which might
> also be worth looking into for the future, if this kind of functionality
> is wanted officially.  If I remember, it was also designed to have an
> API similar to readline's.
> (link: http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/)
>   
I've done a quick hack on ecl-readline and have produced an ecl-editline
package for people to try out to see if it works OK using editline's readline
compatible interface. You will need to download the package from

    http://common-lisp.net/project/ecl-readline/releases/


> As for enabling or disabling the functionality, I guess that isatty(3)
> or equivalent could be used to detect when to disable it for
> non-interactive use of stdin...
>   
ecl-readline probably should do some sort of test like this and only
enable itself if stdin is a tty. I'll add this functionality in the next
version.

> If the issue is a maintenance one more than license one, then I
> understand and appreciate the value of third party ECL contribs, too. :)
>   
It's only using readline as that was the one I was familiar with. I can
just as easily do an editline based version if there is enough demand
for it. If the majority of people would rather have it based on editline
with a BSD license then I am more than happy to do that.

Jason.