[slime-devel] Backend carnage! Battle stations!

[Luke Gorrie]

Howdy,

I just checked in some incompatible changes to the backend
interface. I've only updated the CMUCL backend so far, and I'm hoping
to fix SBCL (and maybe LispWorks) this evening. Backend hackers please
join in :-). The ChangeLog gives the gist, and diff'ing
swank-cmucl.lisp against FAIRLY-STABLE will show how the CMUCL backend
was updated.

Everyone else might want to stick to FAIRLY-STABLE (just updated) for
a day or two 'til the dust settles.

The basic change is to move most of the protocol logic into portable
code. Now the backends provide a generic callback-based TCP server
interface which is used by swank.lisp to implement the basic protocol,
parts of I/O redirection, and the dedicated output channel. Hopefully
it also buys enough generality that multithreading experiments can go
forward without breaking backends again.

It should be mostly a matter of deleting code and adapting what
remains. The new interfaces are documented in swank-backend.lisp.

Questions & flames welcome :-)

Cheers,
Luke