March Quicklisp dist update now available

I've put up a dist update for March. To get it, use (ql:update-dist "quicklisp"). Unfortunately, the dist update report you get from that command is broken. It doesn't show accurate info about what projects have been added, updated, and removed. So here's the scoop:

New this month: cl-base32, cl-blapack, cl-fastcgi, cl-gravatar, cl-mysql, cl-openid, cl-recaptcha, cl-sendmail, cl-svg, cl-webkit, clon, eager-future2, fnv, ip-interfaces, km, metafs, opticl, parenscript-classic, planks, sb-fastcgi, trivial-bit-streams, uri-template, and xmls-tools.

Updated this month: alexandria, binge, bknr-datastore, blackthorn-engine, ch-image, chillax, cl-2d, cl-azure, cl-cairo2, cl-closure-template, cl-containers, cl-devil, cl-glfw, cl-llvm, cl-mediawiki, cl-mw, cl-num-utils, cl-opengl, cl-routes, cl-sphinx, cl-test-more, cl-twitter, cl-uglify-js, cl-unification, clfswm, clonsigna, closer-mop, commonqt, cxml-rpc, external-program, f2cl, fare-utils, gbbopen, gsll, hh-web-tags, hu.dwim.perec, hu.dwim.quasi-quote, hu.dwim.stefil, hu.dwim.util, hu.dwim.wui, lift, lisp-on-lines, lispbuilder, local-time, mime4cl, monkeylib-binary-data, mtlisp, net4cl, nibbles, npg, parenscript, parse-js, pileup, protobuf, relational-objects-for-lisp, retrospectiff, rfc2388-binary, sclf, slime, ucw, usocket, uuid, weblocks, wuwei, and x.fdatatypes.

Removed this month: aromyxo, cl-random, lla, sw-db, sw-http, sw-mvc, sw-stm, and symbolicweb. The SymbolicWeb libraries are tracking the bleeding edge of SBCL and don't work on any release yet. Tamas Papp's numeric libraries are in flux and don't work with the updates to cl-num-utils.

With this update, Quicklisp now includes 498 libraries. Next month it should have well over 500. Hackers, keep hacking! If there's a new project you'd like to see in Quicklisp, please open a GitHub issue and let me know about it.

Client update woes

Yesterday I put up an update to the Quicklisp client software. Unfortunately, it was broken on any SBCL older than 1.0.44, which turns out to cover a lot of SBCL users, including people who got SBCL for Windows from www.sbcl.org and people who get SBCL from their Debian, Ubuntu, or Red Hat package systems. To fix the problem, I've put out an updated version today that will hopefully resolve that problem.

To get the new client, you can use (ql:update-client). The new client will be loaded when your Lisp session is restarted. Please let me know if it causes any problems for you!

update If you got the bad update, and you're having trouble starting SBCL as a result, there are a few things you can try. If you have CLISP, you can use that to get the good update, and it will be used the next time you start SBCL. You can also fetch http://beta.quicklisp.org/quickstart/quicklisp-2011032000.tgz and unpack it in ~/quicklisp/.

Survey for corporate users

Scott Turner commented on Quicklisp helps focus ABCL development: "You need to get authenticating proxies into Quicklisp, or else you're never going to get users (or statistics) from the majority of corporate environments." I've only had a few people ask about support for authenticating proxies, so it hasn't been a high priority to implement yet. Maybe that priority should change?

Are you in a corporate environment? Do you use Quicklisp? Do you want to use Quicklisp, but the lack of authenticating proxy support holds you back? Let me know in the comments, please.

HTTP traffic info by region

Quicklisp project files are served via Amazon's CloudFront content delivery service. Here are the HTTP request stats for February for each of its supported geographical regions:

• Europe: 21,671 requests
  
• United States: 14,535 requests
  
• Japan: 5,025 requests
  
• Hong Kong and Singapore: 1,689 requests
  

I was a little surprised to see Europe as the #1 source of Quicklisp HTTP requests.

Kind words from a Quicklisp donor

I got a nice note from a donor today:

By the way quicklisp is amazing. There are so many times I see a cl library and say, "well that does do what I need, but I can probably write the 10-20% of its functionality that I need right now faster than I can install it." Quicklisp has probably saved me 20+ hours of my time, as well as reinventing a couple wheels. $20 is almost an insultingly low amount to donate after that.