Subject: Re: Hello / CLISP flying into outer space ? :-)

From: [email-masked] (kr)
Date: kr\r\essword:, 18 Jul 1995 17:24:46 -0800

At 0:16 7/18/95, Erann Gat wrote:
>  I'd like to tell you a bit about what I'm using it for, and
>find out who is currently doing active development on it.

Thank you for your interesting message. Unfortunately, I have not yet
gotten something similarly interesting to share. In the small amount of
spare time I  have, I have been working on a program to help design
polymers that fold up predictably, similar to proteins. But there is still
quite a way to go. I will try to make sure that it will run on both CLISP
and GCL.

>I am using CLisp to prototype a spacecraft executive based on a control
>methodology called conditional sequencing.  I won't bore you with the
>details; if anyone is interested, contact me.

I personally would be very interested in knowing more about it. If you
could send a summary description to me, I would appreciate it.

Will this code be freely available in its source ?

>The current project is only a prototype, but I am also interested in using
>Lisp for actual flight code.

Great.
Why are you using CLISP and not GCL ? Would one not assume that GCL could
be faster because it can be fully compiled, not just byte-compiled as in
CLISP ? There seems to also exist a GCL derivative called ECL (Embedded
Common LISP) that claims to have multiple thread capability. Have you
investigated that as well ?

>My approach is, rather than arguing with people, to instead build working
>systems that meet all the performance requirements.  Towards this end, I and
>a student of mine (with considerable help from Bruno) have ported CLisp (the
>January 1995 version) to vxWorks, which is a real-time operating system that
>is one of the lead candidates for use on flight hardware.

Which CPU chips actually are flying ? What clock rate ? How much memory
does the flight computer carry ?

So will CLISP be used in a real-time, multi-tasked fashion ? That certainly
would be an interesting upgrade. :-)

Greetings
Markus Krummenacker

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From: [email-masked] (Bruno Haible)
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 95 12:47:58 +0200

Markus Krummenacker <[email-masked]> writes:

> CLISP ?

Maybe reliability is more an issue than speed. Please raise your hands
if you have ever seen CLISP dump core and it wasn't due to the readline
library or the foreign function interface. (OK, to be honest, I raise my
hand.) Just imagine the embarassement if the software dumps core while
running for real in outer space...

Bruno Haible                        email: <[email-masked]>
Software Engineer                   phone: +33-1-49083585

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From: [email-masked] (Joerg-Cyril Hoehle)
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 95 14:29:21 +0200

Salut Bruno!

Tu vas maintenant faire d'enorme progres en Francais -- a moins que
tout le monde ne parle Anglais dans ta boite.

Tu vas bien? A l'occasion, tu pourras me raconter comment tu as trouve
un logement, ou tu habites, etc.

A la prochaine, a Paris :)

	Jorg.