INSTALLING SBCL CONTENTS 1. BINARY DISTRIBUTION 1.1. Quick start 1.2. Finding ancillary files 1.3. Anatomy of SBCL 2. SOURCE DISTRIBUTION 2.1. Quick start 2.2. Customizing SBCL 2.3. Troubleshooting 2.4. Tracking SBCL sources 2.5. Supported platforms 1. BINARY DISTRIBUTION 1.1. Quick start: To run SBCL without installing it, from the top of binary distribution directory: $ sh run-sbcl.sh The following command installs SBCL and related documentation under the "/usr/local" directory: # INSTALL_ROOT=/usr/local sh install.sh You can also install SBCL as a user, under your home directory: $ INSTALL_ROOT=/home/me sh install.sh In other words, "install.sh" installs SBCL under the directory named by the environment variable "INSTALL_ROOT". If you install SBCL from binary distribution in other location than "/usr/local", see section 1.2, "Finding ancillary files". 1.2. Finding ancillary files The SBCL runtime needs to be able to find the ancillary files associated with it: the "sbcl.core" file, and the contrib modules. Finding core can happen in three ways: 1. By default, in a location configured when the system was built. For binary distributions this is in "/usr/local/lib/sbcl". 2. By environment variable, in the directory named by the environment variable "SBCL_HOME". Example: $ export SBCL_HOME=/foo/bar/lib/sbcl $ sbcl If your "INSTALL_ROOT" was FOO, then your "SBCL_HOME" is "FOO/lib/sbcl". 3. By command line option: $ sbcl --core /foo/bar/sbcl.core The usual, recommended approach is method #1. Method #2 is useful if you're installing SBCL on a system in a non-standard location (e.g. in your user account), instead of installing SBCL on an entire system. Method #3 is mostly useful for testing or other special cases. Contributed modules are primarily looked for in "SBCL_HOME", or the directory the core resides in if "SBCL_HOME" is not set. ASDF:*CENTRAL-REGISTRY* serves as an additional fallback for ASDF-based modules. 1.3. Anatomy of SBCL The two files that SBCL needs to run, at minimum, are: src/runtime/sbcl output/sbcl.core In addition, there are a number of modules that extend the basic sbcl functionality, in contrib/ The "src/runtime/sbcl" is a standard executable, built by compiling and linking an ordinary C program. It provides the runtime environment for the running Lisp image, but it doesn't know much about high-level Lisp stuff (like symbols and printing and objects) so it's pretty useless by itself. The "output/sbcl.core" is a dump file written in a special SBCL format which only sbcl understands, and it contains all the high-level Lisp stuff. The standard installation procedure, outlined in section 1.1 "Quick start", is to run the "install.sh", which copies all the files to right places, including documentation and contrib-modules that have passed their tests. If you need to install by hand, see "install.sh" for details. Documentation consists of a man-page, the SBCL Manual (in info, pdf and html formats), and a few additional text files. 2. SOURCE DISTRIBUTION 2.1. Quick start To build SBCL you need a working toolchain and a Common Lisp system (see section 2.5 "Supported platforms"). You also need approximately 128 Mb of free RAM+swap. To build SBCL using an already installed SBCL: $ sh make.sh If you don't already have an SBCL binary installed as "sbcl" on your system, you'll need to tell make.sh what Lisp to use as the cross-compilation host. For example, to use CMUCL (assuming has been installed under its default name "lisp") as the cross-compilation host: $ sh make.sh 'lisp -batch -noinit' The build may take a long time, especially on older hardware. A successful build ends with a message beginning: "The build seems to have finished successfully...". To run the regression tests: $ cd tests && sh run-tests.sh To build documentation: $ cd doc/manual && make This builds the Info, HTML and PDF documentation from the Texinfo sources. The manual includes documentation string from the build SBCL, but if SBCL itself has not been yet built, but one if found installed documentation strings from the installed version are used. Now you should have the same src/runtime/sbcl and output/sbcl.core files that come with the binary distribution, and you can install them as described in the section 1. "BINARY DISTRIBUTION". 2.2. Customizing SBCL You can tweak the *FEATURES* set for the resulting Lisp system, enabling or disabling features like documentation strings, threads, or extra debugging code. The preferred way to do this is by creating a file "customize-target-features.lisp", containing a lambda expression which is applied to the default *FEATURES* set and which returns the new *FEATURES* set, e.g. (lambda (features) (flet ((enable (x) (pushnew x features)) (disable (x) (setf features (remove x features)))) ;; Threading support, available only on x86/x86-64 Linux, x86 Solaris ;; and x86 Mac OS X (experimental). (enable :sb-thread))) This is the preferred way because it lets local changes interact cleanly with CVS changes to the main, global source tree. A catalog of available features and their meaning can be found in "base-target-features.lisp-expr". 2.3. Troubleshooting "GNU Make not found" If the GNU make command is not available under the names "make", "gmake", or "gnumake", then define the environment variable GNUMAKE to a name where it can be found. Segfaults on Fedora Try disabling exec-shield. The easiest way is to use setarch: "setarch i386 -R sbcl". Build crashes mysteriously, machine becomes unstable, etc You may be running out of memory. Try increasing swap, or building SBCL with fewer other programs running simultaneously. Other * Check that the host lisp you're building with is known to work as an SBCL build host, and that your operating system is supported. * Try to do a build without loading any initialization files for the cross-compilation host (for example "sh make.sh 'sbcl --userinit /dev/null --sysinit /dev/null'"). * Some GCC versions are known to have bugs that affect SBCL compilation: if the error you're encountering seems related to files under "src/runtime", down- or upgrading GCC may help. * Ask for help on the mailing lists referenced from . 2.4. Tracking SBCL sources If you want to be on the bleeding edge, you can update your sources to the latest development snapshot (or any previous development snapshot, for that matter) by using anonymous CVS to SourceForge. (This is not recommended if you're just using SBCL as a tool for other work, but if you're interested in working on SBCL itself, it's a good idea.) Follow the "CVS Repository" link on for instructions. 2.5. Supported platforms Last updated for SBCL 0.9.3.74 (2005-08-20). All of the following platforms are supported in the sense of "should work", but some things like loading foreign object files may lag behind on less-used operating systems. Supported toolchains: GNU toolchain Sun toolchain with GCC Supported build hosts are: SBCL CMUCL OpenMCL ABCL (recent versions only) Note that every release isn't tested with every possible host compiler. You're most likely to get a clean build with SBCL itself as host, otherwise OpenMCL on a PPC and CMUCL elsewhere. Supported operating systems and architectures: x86 PPC Alpha Sparc HPPA MIPS MIPSel x86-64 Linux 2.2, 2.4, 2.6 X X X X X X X X FreeBSD X OpenBSD 3.4, 3.5 X NetBSD X Solaris X X Tru64 X Darwin (Mac OS X) X X Windows X Some operating systems are more equal than others: most of the development and testing is done on x86/x86-64 Linux and x86/PPC Mac OS X. If an underprivileged platform is important to you, you can help by e.g. testing during the monthly freeze periods, and most importantly by reporting any problems. If you need support beyond what is available on the mailing lists, see "Consultants" in the "SUPPORT" file.