Re: Towards a LispMachine and/or LispOS

2008/5/4 Shawn Betts <[email protected]>:

> > To conclude, my experience is that addressing these fundamental OS
> issues
> > inevitably leads to the design of the base Lisp system, be it Movitz or
> any
> > other. So I am curious. How do you guys feel about this, assuming you
> have
> > looked at it from a Lisp implementation viewpoint and perhaps using
> Movitz?
>
> I think what you're trying to say is that the common lisp spec is
> great but incomplete because it doesn't specify any of the APIs for
> accessing hardware. Am I right? If so, you should check out the source
> code and you will see what sorts of datastructures and functions are
> used to manipulate the hardware.


Yes, the spec would need extensions, add-ons, whatever you want to call it.
All Common Lisp implementations that I know of have them. Also, you can
usually code yourself out of any hole via some FFI mechanism. I perceive
that Movitz does this by allowing inline X86-assembler code. But hardware
drivers, although tedious to write, are only a part of a greater problem.

At this point, I paused to scan the posts in the Movitz-devel list. Some
interesting topics on OS and VM building were brought forward in 2004. I
guess I was fishing for your views generally in the light of your
experiences.

Lars