Re: [Maxima-discuss] Trying to accommodate GCL is keeping us from making progress

[Stavros M. <mac...@al...>]

Thanks for your analysis, Robert.

I don't see any reason for keeping GCL, either.

Some specific questions:

> Pros for keeping GCL:
> - Supporting GCL means increased portability of Maxima
>
- - Some operating systems have GCL accessible due to it being a GNU
> project.
>

What operating systems support GCL and not another Lisp that Maxima runs
on? Certainly we *must* run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux; beyond that, what
other OSs do users care about?

- - GCL is an older Lisp and therefore works on older systems.
>

How old? We can't commit to working forever on all old systems.

> - - GCL, like CLISP, gives you an inalienable right to its source code.
>

I'm not sure what "inalienable" means here. What exactly is the objection
to other Lisps' licenses? That they're not viral?

- Since Maxima was co-developed with GCL, Maxima may be faster in some
> smaller arenas (symbol-plists IIRC?) than other Lisps. (This knowledge may
> be out of date.)
>

Even if true, the speedups are surely pretty marginal.

The Wikipedia article on GCL <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Common_Lisp>
claims "GCL is the implementation of choice for several large projects
including the mathematical tools Maxima, AXIOM, HOL88, and ACL2" -- but
that text (except for HOL88) was written in 2005. Is it still true?

          -s