Lispwire - A New Lisp Software Repository
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
While reading through some postings on c.l.l. recently, I came across a post by Mark McConnell in which he mentioned his Sheafhom package - Lisp software for "large sparse linear algebra computations over the integers and other exact number types". Since I still have an interest in math software (I majored in math at one stage in a previous lifetime), I went to his site to have a read about what his software does. Although his math software sounded interesting, another thing on Mark's web site interested me. He mentioned that his software would soon have a new home on Lispwire. Since I hadn't heard about Lispwire previously, this got my interest. It turns out that Lispwire was created by Franz, Inc as (among other things) a "repository for modern Lisp software and classic Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools" and is meant to offer the following:
- Provide the Lisp community with a repository for interesting Common Lisp (CL) applications. Some applications will be purely educational, demonstrating an algorithm or a principle; others will be of production quality that can be used in commercial projects. All software in the LispWire repository will be tested against the latest version of Allegro CL. Since most of the software here is open source, it may also work with other Lisp implementations
- Provide university professors teaching AI (including software reasoning, machine learning, expert systems, knowledge capture and processing, etc.) a large number of AI tools and examples to help their students learn AI principles faster.
- Showcase Lisp as a general purpose programming language for complex, enterprise mission critical applications in areas such as MCAD, ECAD, e-commerce, business search, scheduling, video games, telecom, Bioinformatics, etc.
- Provide an archive for classic AI software, as well as a repository for new cutting edge AI tools.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Bio Informatics
- CLOS and the MOP
- Cognitive modelling
- Compression
- Cryptography
- Databases
- Enterprise solutions
- Game environments
- Graphics
- GUI's
- Financial
- Foreign Function Interfaces
- Java and Lisp
- Modelling/Simulation
- Mathematics Packages
- Music
- Network programming
- Parser generators
- Photography
- Publishing
- Regular Expressions
- Scientific programming
- Security
- Semantic Web
- SWIG libraries
- Statistics
- Text processing
- Utilities
- Virtual Reality (VRML)
- Webprogramming
- Webservices
- Description of the package including home URL, references and related books
- Instructions for installing the package
- Examples of use
- Tutorial on using the package
- Technical information about the package including author, version, dependencies, platform and development status
- Download information including a download link, documentation link, license, and raw source for the package entry in Lispwire (useful if you want to see how to fill out a contribution form for submitting one of your own packages to Lispwire. Although Franz is starting to flesh out the package information on the site, you can contribute information on additional packages by filling out a form and sending it in.)
One thing that I would like to see added to Lispwire is asdf-install capabilities. Although this is available using a combination of CLiki and cCLan already, it is a bit cumbersome to setup and use. It would be nice if Lispwire provided a secure, consistent, professionally presented means for locating, downloading and installing both free and non-free Lisp packages.
Update-2005-06-16: Nikodemus Siivola is "not impressed" by the Lispwire site. He lists his objections to the wording of the legal notice on the site. I agree with some of his objections (I hadn't bothered to read the legalese before I wrote my post), but I still think the site has a lot of potential.
