republiccommonl-lisper Mailing List for Republic Common Lisp (RCL)
Brought to you by:
lispermv
You can subscribe to this list here.
2008 |
Jan
|
Feb
|
Mar
|
Apr
(1) |
May
|
Jun
|
Jul
|
Aug
|
Sep
|
Oct
|
Nov
|
Dec
|
---|
From: <rep...@li...> - 2008-04-09 09:58:59
|
Welcome to the Republic Common Lisp Project. You will soon discover that this project has some very unique aspects. A successful project is not always about producing and distributing code. Good governance, a clear set of objectives, and vision for what is possible is equally important. RCL is primarily about addressing some of the gaps that were felt to exist with respect to existing Common Lisp implementations. The gaps were not specifically technical ones. In fact we believe that there are some really great implementations available to choose from. Folks are well served by the top one or two open source distributions as well as the half dozen or so commercial ones. This project isn't actually about creating another distribution. Its about collecting the components necessary to assemble a reference implementation from the wide variety of implementations that are available. The project differentiates itself from a typical Lisp implementation in that it is primarily focused upon creating a validation suite and set of community driven specifications that manifest themselves in the reference implementation but are actually intended for use by other Common Lisp implementors. Implementors that pass the validation suite get the recognition that their implementation meets the community agreed upon standard. Developers who are looking for portability and standardization know that objective standards have been applied and that they then have some assurance that their code will work as expected in any distribution that passes the validation suite. This project hopefully will address the problem with the statement "almost ANSI standard". Interpretation of the ANSI standard is a task for the Gods and not mere humans. Its a specification that is open to interpretation but gives no consistent methodology to ensure that an implementation is or isn't actually compliant. There are simply too many options left to implementers. It is important to note that passing our validation suite does not mean your implementation is ANSI compliant. We are not affiliated with the standards board in any way whatsoever. Our validation suite has as its objective only to validate that an implementation meets community agreed upon interpretation of the the standard we all love. In point of fact the actual standard leaves a great deal open to implementers. Our validation suite will constrain some of the latitude the standard introduces to improve upon the level of predictability that a RCL conformant implementation exhibits. We welcome Lisp community participants to propose specifications. The process is pretty simple. Send us your proposal for a standard with validation code that verifies the standard and include what changes would be required to the reference implementation to enable the standard. Then the community is given time to review the proposal after which the governance board votes to either accept or reject the proposal. More details can be found in the governance section of the website. In short, we welcome your participation and look forward to working with you. RCL is not a commercial endeavor nor does it ever intend to be one. It is a pure open source, community driven activity supported by project participants that love Lisp. Thank You Lisper |