[Openmcl-devel] ETA on CCL for M1 Macs?

[Andrew Shalit]

CCL runs much closer to the metal than most other Lisp implementations.  For example, it uses native threads.  It uses things like segfaults and interrupts to support the object model, eg knowing when it has to allocate more stack space or trigger a GC. It has a relocating garbage collector.  So whoever does the work needs to be comfortable navigating the operating system and CCLs internal data structures and runtime in GDB.  And they need to do all that in the context of 30+ years of code that was mostly written by one very smart person.  So, yes, it requires someone with a very specific skill set, and there aren’t many such people around.

> On Jan 31, 2022, at 1:21 PM, Laughing Water <lw at mt.net> wrote:
> 
> Highly non-trivial because of things peculiar to CCL? I’m curious because other CL implementations and Racket (a Lisp) have successfully landed on the M1 planet.
> 
> Laughing Water
> 
>> On Jan 31, 2022, at 11:04 AM, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
>> 
>> The limiting factor at this pint is finding someone who is technically able to do the work.  It’s apparently a highly non-trivial effort.
>> 
>> On Jan 31, 2022, at 9:46 AM, Mike Byrne <byrne at rice.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jan 31, 2022, at 08:40, Andrew Shalit <alms at clozure.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Unfortunately there hasn’t been progress and the port to Apple Silicon is in doubt.  There were people willing to provide a good chunk of funding, and there was someone interested in doing the work.  But that person had some circumstances preventing them from starting. Several months later, they still haven’t been able to start.  At this point I don’t expect a port to happen any time soon, if at all.
>>> 
>>> Obviously my vague memory was wildly inaccurate.  This is disappointing news, but it is what it is.  Somewhat to my surprise, what I needed actually works under SBCL, so I'm not completely out of luck, but I will miss the IDE.  Still, I've been using MCL since the late 1980s so there's a bit of an "end of an era" feel to it.  Hopefully it isn't really the end, just a delay.  
>>> 
>>> -Mike
>>> 
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