Gnu Common Lisp for Microsoft Windows

(If what you want is an interface to X Windows for GCL, that is here.)
For a complete installation of Gnu Common Lisp get gcl-2.6.1.exe (15 MB download, 60 MB to install). Unfortunately, at present this version of GCL produces a ^M (Return) character at the end of each line when used within Emacs.

For convenience, a version of GCL for Windows, renamed gcl.exe, is available for download here (3.4 MB). To install this software, put gcl.exe directly into C:/. This is an older version, but is smaller and does not produce the ^M characters.

GCL can be executed directly by double-clicking on it, but it is better when run from within Emacs.

Connecting Emacs to GCL:

The following steps will connect Emacs to GCL so that GCL can be run using the Emacs command M-x run-lisp.
  1. If you do the full installation, GCL will be installed in Program Files. Otherwise, put gcl.exe directly into C:/.
  2. Define the HOME environment variable:
    Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables
    Then define a new System variable HOME as your "home" directory, e.g. 
    C:/Documents and Settings/myname/My Documents/
    where myname would be replaced by your user name.
  3. Put the following file into your HOME directory: .emacs if using the full installation, .emacs if using gcl.exe. Note: when doing a Save As, be sure to save the file as text (.txt). The file must be named .emacs; right-click on the link above, then use Save Target As and change the name of the saved file to ".emacs", adding the quotation marks so that Windows will accept the file name. Alternatively, you can get the file by FTP.
  4. If using the full installation, put the file gcl1.bat into the directory
    C:\Program Files\GCL-2.6.1\bin
  5. For convenience, put the following file into C:/ loadf.lsp Edit the file path in loadf.lsp to be the base directory you would like (such as your HOME directory).

To use Lisp from within Emacs:

  1. Start Emacs. It is convenient to split Emacs into two sub-windows using C-x 2 or C-x 3 ; then you can run Lisp in one half-window while editing code in the other half-window.
  2. Start Lisp in one sub-window with M-x run-lisp   (For M-x, hold down the Alt key while typing x.)
  3. Enter (load "C:/loadf.lsp")
  4. Now you can load files using (loadf "myfile.lsp") or (loadf "mydir/myfile.lsp") where the file path that is specified to loadf will be the path from the base directory that was edited in loadf.lsp

Thanks to Jan Kok for suggestions for improving these instructions.

Gordon S. Novak Jr.