Re: Status update: CMUCL port to Darwin/OS X

Edi Weitz said:
> On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 12:52:21 +0100 (CET), "Pierre R. Mai" <pmai@xxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> This is just a short notice that, after only a short year of delay
>> ;), I've resurrected the PPC backend of CMUCL and more or less
>> completed a port of CMUCL to Darwin/OS X.  Current status, as well
>> as binaries and sources can be had at
>>
>> http://www.pmsf.de/~darwin/
>
> Great! As someone who's still (for at least a year or so...) pondering
> whether his next laptop should be a Mac or not allow me some
> questions:
>
> Does the PPC backend have threads like the x86 version? If not, do you
> have plans to add them?

As Raymond has noted, the Darwin/PPC port is currently like all other RISC
ports (modulo recent work on the SPARC port), hence it uses stop-and-copy
GC, and lacks MP.  It also lacks most recentish additions like callbacks,
and stack-checking (IIRC), though I expect to change that shortly.

I'm definitely interested in adding more features to the port, though I'm
unsure of the time I'll be able to spend on this.

I'm most interested in the native threading work of Dan Barlow for SBCL,
and I might work on porting that to SBCL/ppc, and/or CMUCL/ppc.  That
would also entail porting the Generational GC to PPC, as a prerequisite.

Given the interest in SBCL and CMUCL on Darwin, I'm fairly confident that
there will be continual progress on those ports, from a number of
contributors.

In any case, AFAICT, PPC/OS X is now the platform with the most Common
Lisp implementations, with at least OpenMCL, MCL, LispWorks, Allegro
Common Lisp, CLISP, ECL, SBCL and now CMUCL supporting OS X/Darwin...

> Otherwise, what are the main differences (things to watch out for)
> compared to the x86 version (the only one I'm familiar with)? GC?
> Other things?
>
> How does CMUCL/PPC compare to OpenMCL feature- and performance-wise?

I haven't run benchmarks or anything, but performance-wise I expect CMUCL
to be a bit faster than OpenMCL for a number of things.  OpenMCL has a
faster (simpler) compiler, AFAIK, and has better support for integration
with native OS X facilities (like Cocoa).  It also has support for native
threading, IIRC.

Regs, Pierre.

-- 
Pierre R. Mai <pmai@xxxxxxx>                    http://www.pmsf.de/pmai/
 The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
 is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
 We cause accidents.                           -- Nathaniel Borenstein