Re: Problems with PCL on Allegro CL

[cox@franz.com (Charles A. Cox)]

It appears you have been running into two major problems in trying to
bring up PCL in Allegro CL on your Tektronix workstation (which is a
68K-based machine).  The first problem is a known bug.  A patch that
fixes it is available from Franz Inc.  I believe you have been
contacted privately regarding this patch, but for the rest who may be
experiencing problems with PCL on 68K based Allegro CL, you can ask
about the patch by contacting Franz Inc. (bugs@franz.com is a good
address to use).

The other problem deals with code compiled at different speed/safety
settings.  The Allegro CL documentation (section 7.3.2) describes how
the compiler generates code based on the different values of these
settings.  As documented, we recommend using speed 3 and safety 1 for
"production" code with local declarations to speed 3/safety 0 only
within well tested routines.  The difference between safety 1 and
safety 0 when speed is 3 is that argument checking and interrupt
checking is turned off.  This doesn't make correctly coded programs
fail, but it can make incorrectly coded programs very hard to debug.

We'd be glad to discuss further the optimization switches in Allegro
CL and how they're affected by speed/safety settings, but we should do
so on another list, like Allegro-CL@Berkeley.EDU (formerly known as
excl-forum@Berkeley.EDU).

	Charley
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Charles A. Cox, Franz Inc.        1995 University Avenue, Suite 275
Internet: cox@franz.com           Berkeley, CA  94704
uucp:     uunet!franz!cox         Phone: (415) 548-3600    FAX: (415) 548-8253