[movitz-announce] Macros in Movitz run-time, etc.

[Frode Vatvedt Fjeld]

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to gmane.lisp.movitz.devel as well.

I'd just like to mention that I've recently added macros to the movitz
run-time (and eval). That is, macros in general should work as you
expect at the REPL, and the "macro-function" and "macroexpand"
functions should work according to spec. Notable macros that work are
do, dotimes, dolist, and destructuring-bind. Notable not-working-yet
macros are loop, defclass, and defmethod (i.e. macros that require
extensive machinery beyond the syntax layer).

The macro-expanders are compiled (at create-image time, like normal
functions). This increases the time and output size of create-image
somewhat, but the default kernel still clocks in well below the size
of a floppy image (1.44 MB).

Furthermmore, a number of special operators have been added/improved
in the run-time eval. I expect eval to be reasonably complete soonish.

Finally, the compiling of macros triggered a few compiler bugs that
have now been weeded out (also increasing compiler speed).

-- 
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld