Bill Clementson's Blog

LispWorks Professional/Enterprise with Emacs/SLIME on Win32

Thursday, January 6, 2005

I have previously mentioned how it is possible to configure LispWorks Personal (the trial version of LispWorks) for use with SLIME. The same approach can be used to configure the Professional/Enterprise versions of LispWorks if you want to make use of both the LispWorks IDE and Emacs/SLIME. However, I usually prefer to work entirely within Emacs/SLIME and don't use the LispWorks IDE at all. In that scenario, the LispWorks IDE is just extra "clutter". So, I usually run LispWorks configured to run in "console mode" so that the LispWorks IDE is not brought up; however, this does need a little bit of setup as there is no "console mode" LispWorks executable shipped with the software. To do this, you need to do something similar to this:

1. Create a Lisp source file called "console.lisp" with the following contents:

   (load-all-patches)
   (save-image "lw-console" :console t 
                            :restart-function 'mp:initialize-multiprocessing 
                            :environment nil)
   (quit)

2. From a DOS command line, type the following commands (adjust the directory locations as necessary, of course):

   cd c:\bin\lispworks-4.4\
   lispworks-4400 -init c:\usr\home\lisp\console.lisp

   This will create a console version of the LispWorks executable called "lw-console.exe" in the LispWorks installation directory.
3. Create a file called ".slime.lisp" in your HOME directory. Put the following in it:

   #+lispworks
   (progn (mp:initialize-multiprocessing)
          (swank:create-swank-server 4005
   				  swank::*communication-style*
   				  #'swank::simple-announce-function
   				  t))

4. In addition to the normal stuff you put in your .emacs file for SLIME, add the following function:

   (defun lw ()
     (interactive)
     (setq inferior-lisp-program (concat bin-dir "lispworks-4.4/lw-console.exe"
   				      " -init " home-dir ".slime.lisp"))
     (load "slime"))

"M-x lw"
"M-x slime"