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

[Gunter K. <gu...@pe...>]

I am currently downloading clasp lisp: I cannot compile it on my machine (8 Gigabytes of RAM) but it looks like it might work for maxima.


Am 18. Oktober 2022 06:22:12 MESZ schrieb Robert Smith <ro...@st...>:
>Wolfgang:
>
>Awesome and amazingly valuable work on the daily testing!
>
>Scieneer indeed should be dropped.
>
>I think we could reconsider GCL if it becomes ANSI compliant. That is to say, Maxima should motivate changes to GCL, not vice versa.
>
>As for Allegro, I don't think it should be dropped necessarily, since it is an active commercial implementation of ANSI CL, but it probably ought to come with a warning label saying that it does not receive regular or first-class support/testing.
>
>Some projects classify their support for operating systems and implementations based on "tiers". For example, the Rust programming language classifies (operating system, processor architecture) compiler targets as:
>
>Tier 3: The target may exist in the code base, but it is not officially designated as "supported". No guarantees about basically anything, even the ability to build.
>
>Tier 2: The target is ensured to be able to be built, but there are no guarantees that the tests will pass.
>
>Tier 1: Continuous integration tests that the target builds and the tests pass.
>
>(Details: https://doc.rust-lang.org/beta/rustc/target-tier-policy.html)
>
>We might adopt a similar, albeit less rigorous standard for communicating our support. To illustrate:
>
>Unsupported: Implementations that do not have any mention or support in the code.
>
>* GCL, JSCL, Allegro Trial Edition, LispWorks Trial Edition
>
>Tier 3: Implementations that are mentioned in the code base, that may or may not build Maxima, and are known to be buggy or fail tests, and are not a priority to core developers.
>
>* Allegro (all platforms)
>
>Tier 2: Implementations that are mentioned in the code base, that also can build Maxima, pass a majority of the tests, but are not a priority to core developers.
>
>* LispWorks (all platforms), ABCL (all platforms), ECL (macOS/arm64, Linux/x86)
>
>Tier 1: Implementations that developers strive to haveworking at all times.
>
>* SBCL (all platforms), CMUCL (Linux/x64), CLISP (all platforms), ECL (Linux/x64), CCL (all platforms)
>
>(Again, this is just an example to illustrate, it is not a proposal.)
>It might be over-complicating things a bit. I think most Maxima users care more about having available binaries to run (with e.g., wxMaxima) and less about whether their favorite Lisp is or is not supported.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Robert
>
>On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 13:49, Wolfgang Dautermann <wol...@da...> wrote:
>
>> Am 17.10.22 um 18:46 schrieb Robert Dodier:
>>> At this point I'd like to discontinue support for GCL in Maxima, and
>>> discourage package maintainers from trying to use it, since that will
>>> inevitably lead to users reporting non-working features as bugs. Can I
>>> get anybody on board with that?
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I compile Maxima every day using 8 different Lisp's - and run the
>> testsuite (main and share) with every version:
>>
>> https://wolfgang.dautermann.at/maxima/nightlybuild/logfile-summary.txt
>> https://wolfgang.dautermann.at/maxima/nightlybuild/logfile-share-summary.txt
>>
>> You get all build logs at:
>> https://wolfgang.dautermann.at/maxima/nightlybuild/
>>
>> GCL does not look that bad im my 'statistics'.
>>
>> Maybe - if Camm Maguire reads that list - it would make sense to create
>> a real new *release* - 2.6.13 - in the near future, not just 124
>> 2_6_13pre-versions? Gcl seemms to be actively maintained (although there
>> seems to be just one developer for several years, a pity...).
>>
>> If "code cleanup" (removal of current configure-options, and currently
>> working code in the Maxima code base) is the target, maybe the "support"
>> for "Scieneer Common Lisp (SCL)" should be removed - it is/was
>> commercial software and their website does no longer exist. I changed it
>> to their 'archive.org'-Backup some time ago in our Readme (commit 99a91e9).
>>
>> And maybe too the support for Allegro Common Lisp too - also a
>> commercial Lisp, where one could download a free version for NON
>> COMMERCIAL PURPOSES only. I assume, that I am the only guy, which
>> compiles Maxima using ACL every day...
>> Most tests - of all tested Lisp compilers - fail with ACL (with the main
>> testsuite):
>> 79 tests failed out of 12,805
>> Much more than other Lisp compilers - 7 failed tests (ABCL) is the second.
>>
>> And maybe for GCL the current code (code for ./configure-options, ...)
>> for GCL should be kept, but we might call it a 'not recommended (or not
>> very well tested) compiler'? Or somethin similar?
>>
>> Other Open source projects - e.g. wxMaxima, where I do some
>> contributions in my spare time - are usually just tested with the Gnu
>> C++ compiler - well, every compiler which supports C++14 *should* work,
>> but not every compiler is tested...
>>
>> Best regards, Wolfgang
>>
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