Setting up SLIME on MacOSX

Question

I've been dancing around LISP for decades, but now have decided to get serious. I'm going through the online version of Practical Common LISP.

This is my setup:

MacOSX 10.7.8
Xcode 4.5.2
SBCL 1.0.55.0-abb03f9
Emacs 24.2.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin, NS apple-appkit-1038.36)
SLIME 1.6

I tried to follow the instructions listed in the link:

http://emacs-sbcl-slime.blogspot.com/2010/11/sbcl-emacs-slime-macosx.html

…but the problem is that on the MacOSX platform, nothing seems to be located where it should.

SBCL was installed using its own script…it is working.

I setup the SBCL_HOME env var as instructed.

Emacs was installed by dmg from this link:

http://emacs-sbcl-slime.blogspot.com/2010/11/sbcl-emacs-slime-macosx.html

…and is running.

SLIME, however (which was download via cvs to ˜/.emacs.d/slime) doesn't appear to be recognized. I can't get the "CL-USER>" prompt described by the author.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

1. Copy the entire directory of slime to emacs/site-lisp
2. Ensure your lisp is accesible from the terminal. Just type sbcl in Terminal. Lisp interpreter should start.
3. put into your .emacs file something like (setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl")

It should work then.

Answer 2

I'd suggest just getting Emacs Prelude, which ships with a good Common Lisp + SLIME configuration be default. It's preconfigured for Clozure CL on OSX (given that it's arguably the most popular Common Lisp distribution on OSX), but a simple line of Emacs Lisp in your Prelude personal config can switch SLIME's default Lisp to SBCL:

(setq slime-default-lisp 'sbcl)

The best way to install SLIME itself is probably via the Quicklisp's SLIME helper.

Answer 3

Have you considered using the excellent LispBox bundle that takes care of all the setup for you? It's super easy: http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/

It includes emacs, SLIME, the Clozure Common Lisp environment, QuickLisp and everything preconfigured.