How to Load and Run Allegro Common LISP (v5.0)

These instructions pertain to the installation at the University of Texas but, except for the file paths, should also be applicable to other installations.

Setup

Allegro Common LISP v5.0 is available on both the IBM machines running AIX and the Sun machines running Solaris. The setup for both machines is exactly the same.

If you want to run LISP from the UNIX shell, type acl. The binary is in the directory /lusr/bin.

However, the best way to run LISP is as a subprocess of Emacs. To do this you need to make some changes to your ".emacs" file and to your LISP initialization file, ".clinit.cl".

Setting up your UNIX environment

  1. Put /lusr/bin in your path variable.

Setting up the ".emacs" file

Add the following lines to the file (by the way, "fi" stands for "Franz Incorporated"):
  1. (setq load-path (cons "/lusr/lib/franz/acl5/eli/" load-path))
  2. (autoload 'fi:common-lisp "fi-site-init" "" t)
  3. (setq fi:common-lisp-image-name "acl")

Setting up the ".clinit.cl" file

At the end of the file, place the line:
  1. (start-emacs-lisp-interface)
The documentation claims that the emacs-lisp interface starts automatically, but I find that it doesn't.

Starting LISP

Do the command: M-x fi:common-lisp


Running Allegro Common LISP

The ACL shell accepts a set of commands. For example, :LD loads a file. Here is a list of ACL commands. Also, the Allegro Emacs-Lisp interface defines a set of Emacs commands to manipulate files and program components. Type ctrl-h m in a LISP mode buffer to list the available commands.
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This page was created by

Micheal Hewett