Are there any efforts to make MAXIMA interaction with java?


> -----Original Message-----
> From: maxima-bounces at math.utexas.edu [mailto:maxima-
> bounces at math.utexas.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Dodier
> Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2006 5:02 PM
...
snip
> A related idea is CL which compiles to .Net bytecodes, either via
> a Clisp code generator or an implementation in C# or whatever.
> Someone created a Lisp language for .Net, but it's not CL.

There is RDNZL, a common lisp package allows pretty nearly full access to
.net from several different lisps (each of which requires some special code
in RDNZL).  

Unless the Java virtual machine has been changed, it is really not possible
to map the full common lisp semantics efficiently on to java bytecodes. 
Any attempt to model eval (and a number of other issues having to do with
functions, functional arguments) requires re-inventing too much. This should
have been evident to the people proposing and partially implementing CL in
Java. Apparently it became evident, eventually.

Another possibility is to just compile Java into Lisp, where it can be
compiled to machine code. A first draft of this would probably be a semester
project in a university compiler course. Sort of like f2cl which does
FORTRAN,  j2cl.

A major question is: what is there in Java that Maxima needs to use,
assuming the underlying library (below Java) is available directly to lisp? 

> Too bad about that, really. I forget what it's called.
> 
> > And is there any success to make MAXIMA interaction with C/C++?
> 
> Probably the best way to achieve that is to complete the GCL version
> of CFFI -- it is reported to work already for Clisp, SBCL, and CMUCL.
> I don't know if anyone is working on CFFI + GCL at the moment;
> you would have to check in with the CFFI project.

It seems to me that a more immediate alternative is to simply load maxima
into a lisp that is not GCL. or am I missing something?