Common Lisp -- configuring slime and emacs

Question

I am in the process of configuring slime for emacs. So far I have read about basic functionality for common lisp such as C-c C-q which invokes the command slime-close-parens-at-point which places the proper number of parens where your mouse is. Another command that seemed cool was invoked by C-c C-c and it would pass the code you are editing in a buffer to the REPL, and "compile" it.

Why won't these commands work for me?

Anyway, I have downloaded slime via M-x list-packages and do not seem to have this functionality (C-h w and then any of these commands tells me that these commands do note exist). So, I saw a bunch of other slime extensions such as slime-repl', 'slime-fuzzy' and 'hippie-expand-slime'. So I again usedM-x list-packages` and downloaded them.

Still I did not have these commands. Here is the content of my emacs file relevant to slime:

;;;Common Lisp and Slime                                                                                                                                
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/slime-20130626.1151")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/slime-repl-201000404")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/hippie-expand-slime-20130226.1656")
(add-to-list 'load-path "/home/s2s2/.emacs.d/elpa/slime-fuzzy-20100404")

(require 'slime)
(setq slime-lisp-implementations
     `((sbcl ("/usr/bin/sbcl"))
       (ecl ("/usr/bin/ecl"))
       (clisp ("/usr/bin/clisp" "-q -I"))))

(require 'slime-repl)
(require 'slime-fuzzy)
(require 'hippie-expand-slime)

When I execute M-x slime I get the following message in the inferior-lisp buffer where I can execute common lisp code (however, shouldn't this be the slime-repl since I required it?):

STYLE-WARNING: redefining EMACS-INSPECT (#<BUILT-IN-CLASS T>) in DEFMETHOD
STYLE-WARNING:
   Implicitly creating new generic function STREAM-READ-CHAR-WILL-HANG-P.
WARNING: These Swank interfaces are unimplemented:
 (DISASSEMBLE-FRAME SLDB-BREAK-AT-START SLDB-BREAK-ON-RETURN)
;; Swank started at port: 46533.

Then a slime-error buffer is created with the contents:

Invalid protocol message:
Symbol "CREATE-REPL" not found in the SWANK package.

  Line: 1, Column: 28, File-Position: 28

  Stream: #<SB-IMPL::STRING-INPUT-STREAM {10056B9C33}>

(:emacs-rex (swank:create-repl nil) "COMMON-LISP-USER" t 5)

1. How should I modify my emacs file to give me the functionality of those commands? In my emacs file am I not loading the necessary files? Do I need to install an additional package?

Or if you have better ideas let me know! If you need more information let me know! All help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

Swank is the server in common lisp (in your case, it's SBCL) as the backend of SLIME. SLIME is the frontend in emacs lisp.

slime-repl won't work by itself, it needs the corresponding plugin at the server side. You should ensure that there is swank-repl.lisp in the directory of swank. It's swank-repl.lisp including the "CREATE-REPL" function.

Your slime-repl doesn't work. So you cannot see the *slime-repl* buffer in emacs.

I prefer to use SLIME from the its official GIT repo (https://github.com/slime/slime).