[slime-devel] Re: SLIME+Allegro on Windows

[Peter Seibel]

Helmut Eller <heller at common-lisp.net> writes:

> * Peter Seibel [2006-03-05 22:58+0100] writes:
>
>> So, don't most (all?) Lisp's have some way to accept the name of a
>> file to load as a command line argument? 
>
> Yes, but the details vary a lot.  Also some people use shell scripts
> instead of the actual Lisp executable which complicates the issue.
>
>> I understand that in the
>> early days it was good to just use the *inferior-lisp* machinary
>> because it was there and, when SLIME was in early development, it gave
>> you a way to talk to Lisp when all else failed. Maybe the time has
>> come to break free of the *inferior-lisp* legacy? Assuming I figure
>> out a clean way to have SLIME pass the file-to-load-on-startup info to
>> the spawned Lisp, is there anything else that would be lost by
>> abandoning *inferior-lisp*?
>
> It shouldn't be hard to offer both options to load and start swank:
> the traditional way which sends "(load swank)" to the inferior
> listener and a way to load swank via command line args.
>
> Abandoning the *inferior-lisp* buffer is a somewhat different question
> and doesn't dependent very much on how we load swank.  We could
> probably redirect the output that is currently sent to the
> *inferior-lisp* buffer to the *slime-repl* buffer.  Redirecting input
> would be more difficult.  It's a bigger step than changing the way how
> swank is started.

Yup. I was just wondering--if there were any uses of *inferior-lisp*
that I was unaware of. Sounds like no. Which doesn't mean it's a good
idea to get rid of it--just that it's not any worse than I already
knew. Thanks. Just ruminating at this point anyway.

-Peter

-- 
Peter Seibel           * peter at gigamonkeys.com
Gigamonkeys Consulting * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/
Practical Common Lisp  * http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/