3 ms·

> I honestly think that Common Lisp can do this quite well I haven't used any lisp dialects for decades, so I have naive questions: is there really sufficient

> I honestly think that Common Lisp can do this quite well I haven't used any lisp dialects for decades, so I have naive questions: is there really sufficient support from compilers+linkers to write a bootloader in lisp? Do I have to do a lot of bootstrapping in assembly to bring up lisp interpreter before I can execute the lisp code or does the ahead-of-time-build result in executable machine code? Can I do inline assembly (not required but a really key benefit IMO)? Are there numerous examples where someone's already written one in lisp?

sanxiyn 10y ago
For an example of operating system kernel completely written in Lisp, see https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano
tjalfi 10y ago
https://github.com/dym/movitz https://github.com/dym/movitz is a Common Lisp system that runs on bare metal x86. The source code is quite readable. The rest of this post is an excerpt from an email I sent 6 years ago. The following comments on runtime systems are partially based on a long c.l.l thread with posts by Lucid, Symbolics, and Franz alumni. Franz uses a 3-layer approach: CL, a low-level Lisp, and C. Lucid started with Lisp that generated assembler but reluctantly added some C. Symbolics Lisp Machines used bootstrap code in a Pascal-level language with prefix syntax. A Symbolics alum said that in retrospect they should have used C. Most Lisp implementations have subprimitives - low-level functions that can circumvent the type system, often with a prefix such as % or :. Assembly language integration dates to Lisp 1.5 and there are several common approaches. 1. turn the optimizer off - this is easy to use and implement. 2. optimize the assembler block - Naughty Dog GOAL did this. 3. annotate the assembler block with pragmas that indicate side effects. This can be error prone and difficult to use. https://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/08/16/how-to-define-new-intrinsics-in-sbcl/ https://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/08/16/how-to-define-new-intrins... is an example of this approach. Edited to add the SBCL intrinsic link.
- kazinator 10y ago
  3 sounds like where GCC got its inline asm concept from: annotate the assembly with what are the inputs and output operands with constraints (do they have to be certain kinds of registers), and whether anything has surprising side effects.

sanxiyn 10y ago

For an example of operating system kernel completely written in Lisp, see https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

tjalfi 10y ago

https://github.com/dym/movitz https://github.com/dym/movitz is a Common Lisp system that runs on bare metal x86. The source code is quite readable. The rest of this post is an excerpt from an email I sent 6 years ago. The following comments on runtime systems are partially based on a long c.l.l thread with posts by Lucid, Symbolics, and Franz alumni. Franz uses a 3-layer approach: CL, a low-level Lisp, and C. Lucid started with Lisp that generated assembler but reluctantly added some C. Symbolics Lisp Machines used bootstrap code in a Pascal-level language with prefix syntax. A Symbolics alum said that in retrospect they should have used C. Most Lisp implementations have subprimitives - low-level functions that can circumvent the type system, often with a prefix such as % or :. Assembly language integration dates to Lisp 1.5 and there are several common approaches. 1. turn the optimizer off - this is easy to use and implement. 2. optimize the assembler block - Naughty Dog GOAL did this. 3. annotate the assembler block with pragmas that indicate side effects. This can be error prone and difficult to use. https://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/08/16/how-to-define-new-intrinsics-in-sbcl/ https://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2014/08/16/how-to-define-new-intrins... is an example of this approach. Edited to add the SBCL intrinsic link.

kazinator 10y ago
3 sounds like where GCC got its inline asm concept from: annotate the assembly with what are the inputs and output operands with constraints (do they have to be certain kinds of registers), and whether anything has surprising side effects.