[barmar@Think.COM: CLOE, C development environment on the Symbolics machines]

[Ann Palermo <palermo@scrc-vallecito.arpa>]

    Date: Fri, 8 Jan 88 08:35 EST
    From: Johanna Rothman <JR@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

    You folks should see this...

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    Date: Thu, 7 Jan 88 21:42 EST
    From: Barry Margolin <barmar@Think.COM>
    Subject: CLOE, C development environment on the Symbolics machines
    To: Araman@bco-multics.arpa
    cc: slug@r20.utexas.edu
    In-Reply-To: <880107193811.324990@BCO-MULTICS.ARPA>
    Resent-Date: Fri, 8 Jan 88 00:37 EST
    Resent-From: CMP.SLUG@R20.UTEXAS.EDU
    Resent-To: SLUG: ;

	Date:  Thu, 7 Jan 88 14:38 EST
	From: Araman@bco-multics.arpa

	At AAAI Symbolics announced CLOE (common lisp development/delivery on
	UNIX 5.3) and support for X-WINDOWS.  In addition a C development
	environment was also announced.  I am trying to find out more
	information about these products.  I have the following questions.

	1.  Has any one technically evaluated the products (or is it too soon?)

    It's too soon, I think.  None of this stuff has been released yet.
    We're planning on beta-testing C and we haven't gotten that yet,
    although we're hoping for it to come in the near future.  X Windows will
    probably be quite some time, though -- they haven't even announced it as
    a product, all they said was that they were planning on doing it.  It
    certainly won't be done in time for Genera 7.2, which is when the other
    products you mentioned are supposed to be released.

CLOE went into Beta test last month.  It will be shipping at the
beginning of the second quarter.  We will be making benchmarks available 
at that time.  I'll be happy to send you the data.

	3.  Will the COMMON LISP delivery environment on UNIX 5.3 run in any
	UNIX 5.3 machine.

    Since it includes a cross-compiler, this seems highly unlikely, since it
    is impossible to write compiler that generates code for ALL machines
    that could potentially run Unix 5.3 (unless you do like Kyoto Common
    Lisp does and compile to C).  I believe they specifically said (at SLUG,
    at least, I don't know what they said at AAAI) that it was initially
    targeted to the 80386.  They will also be coming out with various other
    80386 products this year (particularly a co-processor board that goes in
    a Symbolics machine and lets it run Unix or MS-DOS in parallel with
    Genera).

In fact, CLOE consists of two Lisp compilers -- one on the 3600, and a
compatible compiler which runs under UNIX V.3 on 1any0 386-based system.  

	4.  How complete is the C development environment.

    I've never personally used any of their non-Lisp languages, but what I
    have heard and can imagine about them seems pretty good.  A Symbolics
    machine is an excellent development environment for any language.  You
    get all the incremental compilation, hardware bounds and type-checking,
    and debugging features that you get for Lisp (although in the case of C,
    bounds checking only works to the resolution of a malloc'ed block or
    stack frame, because C arrays don't have inherent sizes).  They also
    have some neat syntax-directed editor features, such as electric font
    changing for language keywords and comments, templates that create
    fill-in-the-blank programming constructs, and of course blinking
    curly-braces, brackets, and parens.

	Basically, we are trying to decide if it is a good idea to develop
	systems on symbolics and deliver on UNIX.

A main thrust of CLOE is 1compatibility0.  A program is developed on the
3600, using Genera's development tools, and the source code is
transitioned to the 386, then recompiled.  A great advantage to the
product is that there's 1no0 1porting0 involved. 

The Symbolics system, with its advanced Genera development environment
and tagged architecture, provides an ideal platform for software
development, even when the target machine is not a 3600.

Ann Palermo
CLOE Product Manager

    My guess would be that it would be.  Personally, I know of no better
    debugging environment than a Lisp Machine.

    For C development here some people have been using a C interpreter
    called Saber.  I don't know much about it, though.  Ask in a couple of
    months after we've started testing Symbolics C and we'll probably be
    able to contrast them.

						    barmar

    
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