Compiling Binaries with Clozure Common Lisp

Question

Given a simple program such as the following, how would you:

1. compile it as a seperate image file to be loaded by the implementation, and what command line arguments would you use to load it?

2. Compile it as a standalone binary that can be loaded and run as is.

   Note: I tried adding ":prepend-kernel t" when saving the application only to have the follow error thrown.

   Error: value NIL is not of the
   expected type REAL. While executing: 
   CCL::<-2, in process Initial(0).
   

3. How would you supress the welcome message?

   The Program

   (defun main ()
     (format t "This is the program.")0)
   

Edit

Hate to answer part of my own question, but I found it none the less.

After the function has been loaded type the following to compile it:

(ccl:save-application "app")

This creates an image file. To load it by passing it to the implementation type (note: the 'ccl' binary is in my system path);

ccl -I app

To run a top level function pass it as a parameter

ccl -I app --eval (main)

Answer 1

See the Clozure Common Lisp documentation under Saving Applications

Compiling and Loading Lisp files

You can compile a file named /foo/bar.lisp by calling

 (compile-file "/foo/bar.lisp")

This will create a fasl (FASt Load) file, which contains native code.

You can load the compiled file, the fasl file, with the function LOAD. LOAD and COMPILE-FILE are standard Common Lisp functions.

Creating applications

A few definitions:

• CCL kernel: the part of CCL which provides low-level runtimes services like memory management.
• Image: a saved dump of the Lisp heap
• Application: CCL kernel + image. This can be in one file.

You can save an application by calling a CCL specific function:

(save-application "/foo/bar-image" :toplevel-function #'main)

This will save an image, that you can run using the CCL kernel from a command shell:

ccl -I /foo/bar-image

To save an executable that includes the kernel use this from Lisp:

(save-application "/foo/bar-app"
                  :toplevel-function #'main
                  :prepend-kernel t)

You can call this executable as usual with /foo/bar-app from a command shell.

In Clozure Common Lisp you can check

*command-line-argument-list*

for the list of provided command line arguments.