2010-11-07

November Quicklisp dist update

I've pushed out a new version of the standard "quicklisp" dist. To get it, use (ql:update-all-dists). That command will show a summary of the changes and then perform the update. If you encounter any problems when updating, please email me or report it on the Quicklisp discussion group.

There are a few updates and changes I'd like to highlight.

The Weblocks version in the October Quicklisp dist had a performance issue that meant page display was very slow. I believe that issue has been fixed in the version in this update. If you try Weblocks with Quicklisp, please keep an eye out for any lingering performance problems.

Nikodemus recently updated alexandria to lock its package when using SBCL. That means certain kinds of definitions on alexandria symbols from outside the alexandria package signal an error. That triggered a cascade of updates in projects that depend on alexandria; a typical problem was unwitting redefinition of certain alexandria symbols like appendf and make-keyword.

cl-l10n is now included in Quicklisp. It no longer requires a shell script to fetch its Unicode data files. The data files are now part of a new CL project called cl-l10n-cldr. Thanks to Attila Lendvai for making this Quicklisp-friendly change.

There have been a few project removals as well. teepeedee2 does not work with the new Parenscript 2.2, and its author, John Fremlin, indicated he would not track Parenscript updates. Rather than include a project that doesn't build, I have left teepeedee2 out of the dist. Kenny Tilton's cells no longer compiles on SBCL because it relies on an Allegro-specific keyword for make-hash-table. He indicated he wouldn't make updates just to make it work on SBCL, so at the moment, it is not included in the dist. If you're happily using cells or teepeedee2 with Quicklisp, you can keep using them by not updating your dist. update Kenny just updated Cells and it builds again, so it'll be in the next dist update.

I missed a few project updates, including cl-proc and cl-clon. They will be included in the next dist update. If there are other projects you want to see included in Quicklisp, please create an issue for it on GitHub.

Finally, last week I put out a request for donations on twitter. The generosity of Quicklisp users has been remarkable, and I was able to purchase enough new computer bits and pieces to get a very fast Quicklisp build and test server. It's about twice as fast as doing builds on a Linux VM on my Macbook, and that improved performance helped me get this dist update up faster. A big thank you to everyone who has contributed! If haven't contributed but you'd like to, see the Donate button on www.quicklisp.org.

2 comments:

  1. What is the best way to see a thumbnail description of each project?

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  2. Right now the best way is to check cliki, cl-user.net, or Google. I don't think that's ideal and I'm going to include that kind of information as part of Quicklisp.

    ReplyDelete