[slime-devel] Re: Mailing List Question

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ "Zach Calvert" <zachcalvert at gmail.com>:

> Thanks for the response.  I'm getting used to XEmacs at the same time
> learning about Lisp, so this is probably a newbie question.
> 
> I've set up my XEmacs, Gnu Lisp, and Slime as documented here:
> http://db.glug-bom.org/wiki/index.php/Using_XEmacs_as_a_lisp_shell
> 
> I can get to the REPL using M-x slime  and I can successfully run
> commands such as
> >> (+ 2 3)
> 5

Um, from what you write below I am guessing that this is the
*inferior-lisp* buffer.  Right?

> [...]I get "Not connected"  Also, the minibuffer is also always
> filled with the line:
> Polling "C:\\Documen~\\zcalver\\Locals~1\\Temp\\slime.5876".. (Abort
> with 'M-x slime-abort-connection'.)

Which probably means what it says:  Slime is still looking for the
lisp backend to come online, so you have in fact not succeeded in
starting slime at all (which is why I made the above guess).

What *should* happen is this:  Slime runs your lisp in the
*inferior-lisp* buffer (this clearly happens for you), and send it
commands to load and run the lisp backend for slime (which is called
swank for no good reason that I am aware of).  Meanwhile, slime (which
runs on emacs) keeps polling for the backend swank while displaying
the "obnoxious polling" message in the minibuffer.  As soon as the
background swank has started and the connection is established, the
*inferior-lisp* buffer is pushed into the background, and instead you
see a buffer called *slime-repl <name of your lisp>*.  The prompt you
should see looks like CL-USER> which is another reason I think you are
looking at the wrong buffer.

The *inferior-lisp* buffer should be filling up with all sorts of
messages about compiling and loading swank.  Are you seeing nothing of
the sort?  What does the buffer look like after you started slime and
things have settled down?

- Harald