RE: [Gcl-devel] RE: [Maxima] Re: Maxima cmucl patch

[Stavros Macrakis]

> | In like manner, I've never understood the efforts by some
> | to reproduce the functionality of 'make' within lisp itself
> 
> I think it has to do with the traditional notion of the Lisp 
> development environment in which you basically live and work 
> while you program - Smalltalkers have a similar approach.  
> Lisp machines and so on from the MIT and Xerox traditions...

If you don't have a system definition within the Lisp system (or at
least accessible to it), how do you support interpretive execution?  In
the Maxima context, how would you go about integrating
dynamically-defined Maxima programs into the build system?  Are there
good debuggers available for non-interpretive execution?

Of course in principle you could make all this work in a compiled
environment, but....

      -s

PS Even if Maclisp and other earlier systems did not have
fully-integrated editors (Emacs front ends ran in a separate workspace),
you did "live in" the Lisp system in the sense of loading new versions
dynamically and incrementally rather than rebuilding the system.