May Day PCL with KCL and AKCL

[harrisr@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Richard Harris)]

Some notes on using "5/1/90  May Day PCL (REV 2)" with KCL and AKCL.

If you are using May Day PCL with KCL or AKCL and are having problems,
you might find answers here.

1. Because of a bug in KCL's reader, you must add a return character 
   to the end of precom2.lisp.

2. KCL will try to load the PCL file "init" when it starts up,
   if you rename the files as is mentioned in defsys.lisp.  I suggest
   that you do not rename any file except maybe "defsys", and also 
   that you change the (files-renamed-p t) to (files-renamed-p nil) 
   in defsys.lisp.

3. If you are using KCL (instead of AKCL), you will need to
   change the file kcl-patches.lisp:
  change the line that looks like 
#|
  to
#-(or akcl xkcl)(progn
  and change the line that looks like
|#
  to
)

4. If you are using AKCL, you do not need to do anything to the
   file kcl-patches.lisp.

5. While fixup.lisp compiles, there will be a long pause,
   because KCL's compiler is not reentrant, and some uncompiled
   code is run.  If you want, you can change the form
   (fix-early-generic-functions) to (fix-early-generic-functions t)
   in fixup.lisp to see what is happening.

6. If you want, you can apply the changes in kcl-mods.text
   to your KCL or AKCL to make PCL run faster.  The file kcl-mods.text
   is different from what it was in earlier versions of PCL.
   If you do not make these changes, or if you made the old changes,
   things will still work.

7. If you are using AKCL, and you previously used the kcl-low.lisp
   file from rascal.ics.utexas.edu, you should not use it this time.
   The kcl-low.lisp that comes with May Day PCL works fine.  If you
   insist on using an old version of kcl-low.lisp, you will need to
   use an old version of the KCL part of fin.lisp as well.

8. If you are using a recent version of AKCL, you might want to do a
   (setq compiler::*compile-ordinaries* t) before compiling PCL.
   Read the entry for compile-file in the akcl file doc/DOC to decide.
   I do not do this myself, but it might make things faster.

9. I recommend that you use AKCL version 457 or newer rather than using
   KCL or an older version of AKCL, because there are some bugs in KCL
   that cause problems for May Day PCL.

10. I have tested May Day PCL in AKCL version 473 three ways so far:
    (1) Using (proclaim '(optimize (speed 3) (safety 1) (space 0))),
        and without the changes to AKCL in kcl-mods.text,
    (2) Using (proclaim '(optimize (speed 3) (safety 1) (space 0))),
        and with the changes to AKCL in kcl-mods.text,
    (3) Using (proclaim '(optimize (speed 3) (safety 0) (space 0)))
        (Note: this is what you get by default), and with the changes 
        to AKCL in kcl-mods.text.
    I have had no problems.


Richard Harris