[mcclim-devel] Errors installing McClim

[Oliver Uvman]

Big thanks for the replies! I'll set about cleaning up my SBCL install
and then attempting to install McClim from CVS now, but please notify
me if it's a better idea to install SBCL from CVS, too.

Regards,
Oliver Uvman

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 06:23, Andy Hefner <ahefner at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 1:38 AM, Oliver Uvman <oliver.uvman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> I'm trying to follow the guide on
>> http://mcclim.cliki.net/McCLIM%2BSBCL for installing McClim, but when
>> I do (asdf-install:install :mcclim) I get an error, which I tried to
>> accept and continue the install from, but the errors just keep coming
>> after that so I thought I'd ask.
>
> Short answer: Follow Stas's advice, and additionally check out the
> latest version of McCLIM from CVS rather than using asdf-install.
>
> Longer answer:
>
> The advice on the wiki is a bit out of date.  These days, nine out of
> ten lispers agree that neither asdf-install, common-lisp-controller,
> nor Debian/Ubuntu-packaged lisp implementations should be used by
> anyone, at any time, for any purpose. McCLIM itself should certainly
> be checked out from CVS (or a git mirror) rather than using
> asdf-install, because the last released version of McCLIM is quite
> old. CLC, foisted upon unwitting victims by the Debian lisp packages,
> may not be intrinsically broken, but few people use it, fewer
> understand it, and it has earned a reputation for breaking things and
> causing headaches while offering no real benefit to most users.
>
>> The error I'm getting is:
> ...
>>   for "file /usr/share/common-lisp/source/slime/swank-loader.lisp"
>> ;
>>   {BF565E1}>:
>> ;     package "CLC" not found
> ...
>> I tried (asdf-install:install :clc) but there doesn't seem to be a
>> package with that name. I know it stands for common-lisp-controller,
>> and I have it apt-getted on my system (Ubuntu Lucid x86). Anybody know
>> what the problem is?
>
> Some background: Swank is the backend half of SLIME, written in CL and
> loaded into your lisp process, which emacs talks to over a socket. It
> contains several functions which are useful to McCLIM for doing things
> which can't be implemented portably, and as it's been ported to every
> CL of interest and virtually everyone can be expected to already have
> it on their machines, it makes a handy compatibility layer. CLC is a
> strange thing which, as I understand it, is used by the Debian CL
> packages for its ability to compile systems to FASLs and copy those to
> /usr where any user will be able to load them, so that each user isn't
> forced to compile everything themselves (and deal with the problem of
> not having write permission to /usr where the source code is
> installed). You can imagine how such an arrangement might not appeal
> to someone who wants the option of easily hacking on any and all
> components in their lisp environment, and as such most "upstream"
> hackers, so to speak, reject the CLC-based environment and install
> everything from source, rendering them unable to help when buggy
> interactions involving CLC crop up. :)
>
> The version of SLIME provided by your Linux distribution appears to
> have been modified with the expectation that CLC will always be loaded
> before attempting to load Swank. This must hold true for however
> they've arranged SLIME to work, but not for the (admittedly uncommon)
> case of CL software that wants to load Swank independently. Loading
> CLC manually before attempting to load McCLIM may well fix the issue,
> but I don't know how to do that.
>