Richard Fateman writes:
> I think that Bill Schelter worked pretty hard at
> integrating the Maxima-GCL-Tcl/TK-C interface; he
> also may have had some insight as to why his
> continued support of GCL was better than going to
> CMUCL and CLISP (other than the natural inclination
> we all have to avoid NIH [Not Invented Here]).
>
> I guess what we've seen is that the default handling
> of growing a larger heap space in GCL is not right
> for Maxima, given certain problems. And that rebuilding
> on some new systems causes problems.
> 1. Do we know that the growing of larger heap space
> is an inherent problem, or just related to our inability
> to configure it?
> 2. Do we know that CMUCL and CLISP are better in
> this regard?
>
> I think other issues include portability to other
> platforms (Mac, various UNIX e.g. Sun Solaris, HP-UX,
> BSD-UNIX.. not just one Linux).
GCL 2.4.0 does not build on hpux anymore :-( HPUX support was
nonexitent anyways. Bill did not know and the initial port was done by
someone who is not involved with hpux anymore. 2.3.8 works ok.
I am in favor of maintaining/strengthening CLISP build. Seems to work
on any platform. If you need speed, maybe you'll need to buy a
commercial common lisp implementation or be lucky cmucl/sbcl
working on your platform.
Osman