[Ecls-list] Announce: A new C++ based implementation of Common Lisp based on the ECL CL code

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Christian Schafmeister <
chris.schaf at verizon.net> wrote:

> I've created a new implementation of Common Lisp that has a core written
> in C++ completely from scratch but hosts the ECL Common Lisp source code.
>

Sounds like a lot of work.


> It hosts all of the ECL Common Lisp code in the ecl/src/lsp and
> ecl/src/clos directories of the ECL source tree.
> I do not use any part of the ECL CL->C compiler or the byte code compiler.
> I've implemented my own CL interpreter and CL->LLVM-IR->native code
> compiler.
>

I do not understand why you reimplemented the interpreter, but the LLVM
thingy looks interesting.


> It's purpose is to make possible the seamless interfacing of C++ libraries
> with Common Lisp code and vice versa.
> Within this new implementation it is trivial to interface complex C++
> libraries containing classes, virtual functions, overloaded functions etc
> with Common Lisp code.
>

Sorry, but I do not understand this. There are different things in
interfacing Common-Lisp with C++, and none of them requires building a new
compiler or a LLVM backend.


> Why - you ask?  I'd be happy to explain over a beer or coffee sometime.
> In a nutshell - I want this for my research and prior to my writing it
> there was no Common Lisp implementation that interfaces seamlessly with C++.
> ECL does a great job with "C" but "C++" is a much more complex language to
> interface with and I have a lot of C++ code that I need to interface with.


If you state that ECL cannot interface with C++ I would like to see that
statement backed with examples. EQL is one example that interfacing is not
impossible and, probably, not that hard once you can write C++ inside
Common Lisp code.

But most important, the issue of interfacing Common Lisp and C++ consists
on many different problems that I do not see how you solve at the same time
with the help of LLVM

1. Integrating the C++ type system and the Common Lisp one
2. Being able to call C++ functions from Common Lisp and viceversa
3. Integrating C++ and Common Lisp memory management
4. Possibly automating the generation of wrappers for C++ code.
5. Resolving overloading at runtime instead of at compilation time.
...

Many issues, some of which are mentioned in SWIG,
http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/SWIGPlus.html but even many of which they
(working long in the interface between C++ and dynamic languages) do not
have an answer to.

Juanjo

-- 
Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com
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