Re: Wade Hennessey's work on lisp

[layer@franz.com (Kevin Layer)]

>> I picked up Hennessey's paper (described in included message below)
>> and found it quite convincing. I'd like to know what people at Franz
>> think of this work and if acl is moving in this direction.

We have been looking at shared library technology since it was
introduced on various platforms, and will be giving more thought to
the incorporation of it into a future version of Allegro CL.

As you know, there is a trade off between the ability to share
portions of an image among many processes and the cost of initializing
an image to link in the shared libraries and create the per-process
data.  Lisp, unlike C, has a large dynamic component.  For example,
the symbols made available by a shared library need to be interned.
It is unclear what the startup cost of an executable would be for a
fully compliant ANSI Common Lisp (ie, one that includes CLOS).

Kevin Layer, Franz Inc.         1995 University Avenue, Suite 275
layer@Franz.COM (internet)      Berkeley, CA  94704  USA
Phone: (510) 548-3600           FAX: (510) 548-8253