Zach Beane's Blog

Tug, Barge, and Lighthouse

xach@xach.com — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:02:13 GMT

Tug, Barge, and Lighthouse, originally uploaded by Zach Beane.

One Longfellow Square

xach@xach.com — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:03:25 GMT

One Longfellow Square, originally uploaded by Zach Beane.

Cody and Clint Phipps, aka Pitch Black Ribbons.

Behind Beal's Ice Cream

xach@xach.com — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:29:56 GMT

Behind Beal's Ice Cream, originally uploaded by Zach Beane.

Kite control

xach@xach.com — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 01:08:43 GMT

Kite control, originally uploaded by Zach Beane.

Mining for data in Quicklisp with qlmapper

xach@xach.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:12:18 GMT

The code in Quicklisp represents a large amount of interesting data. It's difficult to systematically query it, but I've been trying to make it easier, and one step in that process is available as a library called qlmapper.

qlmapper is pretty simple; it can load an arbitrary Lisp file after loading each system in Quicklisp. Each system is loaded in a fresh SBCL instance, so code that inspects and reports things can work from a mostly-clean Lisp environment.

Here are some pieces of information you could gather and share:

What packages does a given system define?
What are all the packages defined in Quicklisp? What systems introduce conflicting package names?
What foreign libraries does a system load? What is the name of the Debian package name that provides that foreign library?
Everything that Manifest does
Does any code use nreconc or revappend? (Or, more generally, a CL-aware code search engine.)
What ASDF system definitions include :author/:description/:license metadata? Which system definitions need to add it?
Which projects lack a README file (or some variation thereof)?
Which projects don't build and why?

Here's a small example script that I just made for qlmapper:

(defpackage #:foreign-report
  (:use #:cl))

(in-package #:foreign-report)

(defun canonical-name (library-pathname)
  (let* ((name (file-namestring library-pathname))
         (end (search ".so" name)))
    (subseq name 0 end)))

(defun find-library (line)
  (when (and (search "r-xp" line)
             (search ".so" line))
    (let ((path-start (position #\/ line)))
      (when path-start
        (subseq line path-start)))))

(defun maps-table ()
  (let ((table (make-hash-table :test 'equal)))
    (with-open-file (stream "/proc/self/maps")
      (loop for line = (read-line stream nil)
            while line do
            (let ((library (find-library line)))
              (when library
                (setf (gethash (canonical-name library) table) library)))))
    table))

(defun foreign-mappings ()
  (let ((table (maps-table)))
    (loop for object in sb-sys:*shared-objects*
          for name = (sb-alien::shared-object-namestring object)
          collect (list name (gethash (canonical-name name) table)))))

#+qlmapper                                                                      
(with-open-file (stream "~/foreign-libraries.sexp"                                  
                        :direction :output                                      
                        :if-exists :append                                      
                        :if-does-not-exist :create)                             
  (let ((mappings (foreign-mappings)))                                          
    (when mappings                                                              
      (print (list cl-user:*qlmapper-object-name*                               
                   mappings)                                                    
             stream))))

I called it with this: (qlmapper:map-loaded-systems "~/foreign-report.lisp")

An hour later, it produced an interesting report of library usage. It's not perfect, but it's a start, and can be refined to provide more accurate and useful answers. Even in this raw form, I can tell some interesting things. For example, I can tell which libraries I had to build from source (no Debian package available) by checking for "/usr/local" in the results.

What other stuff would be fun to discover about the universe of Quicklisp code? What changes and improvements to qlmapper would make it even easier to discover?

Easier analysis of Quicklisp systems

xach@xach.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 02:10:45 GMT

I just pushed qlmapper to github.

It's made for calling some Lisp code for each system in Quicklisp in a completely fresh SBCL environment. I'm going to use it to gather descriptions and documentation for each project. I hope other people find it useful to systematically work on Quicklisp projects in some way.

Enjoy!

CRACL Redux

xach@xach.com — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:26:33 GMT

Are you in Los Angeles? Do you want to hang out with Lisp nerds? CRACL is meeting on April 19th after a lengthy hiatus.

CL code from MSI

xach@xach.com — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:48:59 GMT

Mathematical Systems, Inc is a Japanese company that has been doing CL stuff for a long time. They've just recently started posting some of their CL libraries to github.

(Of course, you already knew that if you read the github CL project feed.)

package::(...) syntax

xach@xach.com — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:29:41 GMT

For a long time, Allegro CL has allowed a syntax like this:

foo::(bar baz quux)

The "foo::" prefix reads the subsequent sexp as though the current package was the "foo" package.

SBCL 1.0.55 introduced support for this syntax as well. I've started to use it more and more, because I sometimes enter stuff like this at the REPL:

(ql-dist:ensure-installed (ql-dist:system "foo"))

Now I can use this:

ql-dist::(ensure-installed (system "foo"))

It saves me the trouble of inheriting or importing symbols, or switching packages, for simple one-off stuff in the REPL. I don't use it in source files — I don't feel like being that gratuitiously unportable.

Thanks to Nikodemus Siivola for adding this capability to SBCL.

Helpful shoveler

xach@xach.com — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:06:47 GMT

Helpful shoveler, originally uploaded by Zach Beane.

This is 11 days ago. Yesterday the ice cream man made the rounds in the (completely snow-free) neighborhood. Welcome to Maine!

Time flies

xach@xach.com — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:48:08 GMT

How time flies!

Lisp Games Wiki

xach@xach.com — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:11:41 GMT

Here's some news from David O'Toole:

Visit the Lisp Games Wiki and add your knowledge!
http://lispgames.org/
What is the Lisp Games Wiki, you ask? It's a community portal and knowledge-base for people working with Lisp, games, and multimedia.
Right now the wiki is in a good state, with overviews of available software, and pointers to many relevant Lisp libraries and projects for each dialect. (All variants of Lisp are welcome on the wiki, from Parenscript to Schemebricks to Common Lisp to Emacs Lisp). There are also a fair number of original informational articles where people have written up ideas or made suggestions.
But we want more! The game development space is changing all the time, and keeping the wiki up to date is very important. HTML5 and Parenscript are just a few of the new possibilities to keep track of (and explore for your own projects.)
Please visit http://lispgames.org and look around. Feel free to add your own knowledge and links!

Common Lisp in the [Heroku] Cloud

xach@xach.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:19:58 GMT

Mike Travers just announced a project that runs CL applications on Heroku. Pretty neat.

New App from Clozure

xach@xach.com — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:59:22 GMT

Neat news on the Clozure CL mailing list:

From: Andrew Shalit
Subject: [Openmcl-devel] New App from Clozure
To: openmcl-devel Devel <openmcl-devel@clozure.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 17:39:27 -0500

Hi CCL Users -
I'm happy to announce that our first app written in Clozure CL has just been released in the Macintosh App Store.
Picture Window is a simple but elegant slideshow viewer. It displays pictures in resizable floating windows that stay in view while you're using other Macintosh apps.
Picture Window was written by our very own Matthew Emerson, and it runs on OS X Snow Leopard and Lion.
If you'd like to support Clozure and Lisp-based apps in a small way, you can purchase a copy in the Mac App Store.
It's only $4.99. You can find it here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/picture-window/id507262984?mt=12
Thanks for your support,
Andrew

Boston Lisp meeting: awesome

xach@xach.com — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:14:43 GMT

Daniel Herring did a great job pulling together 14 interested Lispers at short notice to socialize at the Cambridge Brewing Company last night. I got a chance to talk (sometimes briefly) to Daniel, Alastair Bridgewater, Marc Battyani, Daniel Lowe, Stephen Compall, Keith Corbett, Juan José García Ripoll, and François-René Rideau, Nichaulas, and more.

There was no speaker and no agenda; we just sat around a table and hand good food and drink for three hours, chatting about Common Lisp (ASDF, ECL, the package system, project granularity, Quicklisp, etc), computing, children (many of us have young kids), and how much fun it is to get together. I sent a handful of tweets out using the #BostonLisp hashtag at Kent Pitman's suggestion.

As a result of the fun, Faré will put together another meeting soon (possibly April). I hope to talk about Quicklisp, probably along the lines of what I spoke about in October at the European Common Lisp Meeting. If there was a flaw last night, it was that the long, narrow table encouraged discussion between small, constant groups. I look forward to a future gathering where it's a bit easier to amble around and join different discussions.

Hope to see you next time!

Lisp project hosting

xach@xach.com — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 02:35:00 GMT

For many years, common-lisp.net provided a wonderful service not easily available anywhere else. They would give you a login on a Unix system, a mailing list with public archives, a place for a website, a source control system (CVS, darcs, git, svn, etc), and more. All you had to do was ask.

These days, I think it is easier to take advantage of the many free services that have sprung up in the past few years. Here's what I recommend if you're starting a Lisp project today.

Source control: GitHub
Bug tracking: GitHub issues system
Mailing list: Google groups
Blog: Tumblr or Blogger
Email: Google Apps
Website: GitHub or Google Sites
Screencasts: YouTube

There's a lot of overlap in free services, so if you find something else that works well for you, good! There's so much available now that "There's no place to put it" is no longer a valid excuse for not sharing your cool Lisp project with the world.

Hacks and glory await!

Boston Lisp meeting on Thursday

xach@xach.com — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:06:50 GMT

Here's a note from Daniel Herring on the boston-lisp list:

Hi all,

Come join us for an informal night of lisp, food, and other refreshments.
We'll be meeting Thursday, March 1, at 6:30pm in the CBC.

Cambridge Brewing Co.
http://www.cambrew.com/
1 Kendall Square, Bldg 100
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone: 617-494-1994

If you plan to come, please email me by Wednesday afternoon. (So I can give the CBC a head count.)

In addition to the local crowd, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll (of ECL fame) came all the way from Madrid just to meet with us. ;)
Zach Beane says he'll be in town from 5pm; so he might be interested in meeting with people before dinner.

See you soon,
Daniel

Saving your Google Web History before deleting it

xach@xach.com — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:25:51 GMT

I don't like where Google is headed, so I want to delete my web history. I also want to download it first.

Google's own "Data Liberation" website only shows how to download recent history via RSS. The URL looks like this:

    http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=100

I fiddled around and found out it also takes a start parameter, e.g.

  http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=100&start=500

It also accepts bigger numbers for the num parameter; the highest I tried with success was 1000.

Combining those two bits of information, I found out that my history has a little less than 9000 entries. I entered URLs like this into my browser and saved the XML results:

  http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000&start=0
  http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000&start=1000
....
  http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000&start=8000

So after going through this trouble, I figured there must be a tool to do it, and there is. Check out this script from GeekLad.

Naming functions with keywords

xach@xach.com — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:43:55 GMT

I used to have a collection of miscellaneous utilities in a project named ZPB (after my initials). They weren't functions I used in actual source code, just little REPL conveniences, inspired in part by Rob Warnock's great suggestion to Use the Lisp environment to make your life easier!!

Even though the package prefix was short (zpb), I typed the stuff often enough that the prefix in the repl was annoying, but I didn't really want inherit everything with use-package, either. What to do?

Lately I've taken to sticking the functions in my startup file and naming them after keywords. For example:

(defun :go (&optional (thing *))
  "View THING with some appropriate viewer."
  ;; On my Mac laptop, I use "open" instead.
  (sb-ext:run-program "gnome-open" (list (princ-to-string thing))
                      :search t)
  thing)

With this in my startup file, I can do something like this:

* (url-of-interest object)
"http://twitter.com/quicklisp"

* (:go)
URL is opened in Chrome
"http://twitter.com/quicklisp"

These functions are short, easy to type, and always available in any REPL context regardless of the editor settings or current package. In addition to :go, I also have :file-string, :file-vector, :file-lines, :bits, :hex, :make-project, and a few others.

Do you define any shortcuts like this?

Skidder with logs

xach@xach.com — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:44:41 GMT

P1140002, originally uploaded by panacealater.

From my dad's farm. A forester is working the woods over the hill.

ZS3 updates

xach@xach.com — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 15:35:57 GMT

I updated ZS3, my CL library for interacting with Amazon S3, with a few new features.

First, there's support for S3's new multi-object deletion system. In the past, S3 required one API call per object to delete stuff. Now you can delete up to 1000 objects with a single call, and ZS3's existing delete-objects function has been updated to use the new interface and will automatically split up the objects to be deleted into groups of 1000 as needed.

Multi-object deletion can be a big deal, since each API call costs money.

Second, there's support for the "reduced redundancy" storage class. Reduced redundancy storage is less durable than standard storage, and it comes with a corresponding reduction in cost. You can choose reduced redundancy when using put-object or related functions, or set the storage class after the fact with set-storage-class.

Third, there's support for automatic object expiration, aka bucket lifecycle configuration. With bucket lifecycle rules you can specify that objects with names that match a certain prefix expire after a certain period of time. You can change a bucket's lifecycle configuration with bucket-lifecycle and related functions.

Automatic expiration of objects is another way to save money on API calls. If objects are deleted automatically, you don't need to use any API calls at all to get rid of them.

Please let me know if there's an S3 feature you really want to see in ZS3. I feel like I'm on a roll and would love to add some more stuff that people need.

Finding SBCL sources

xach@xach.com — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 01:43:22 GMT

You can get SBCL binaries from www.sbcl.org and that works pretty nicely. However, if you use M-. in slime to jump to the definition of a SBCL-defined function (e.g. sb-ext:run-program or cl:car), you might get something like this:

Error: failed to find the WRITE-DATE of /Users/jwise/proj/sbcl/clean/1.0.54/sbcl-1.0.54-x86-64-darwin/src/code/list.lisp:

No such file or directory

That's because the sources are located based on the definition of the SYS logical host, and that host can get carried over from the environment used to bundle up the binary release.

One longtime solution is to download the sources and set up your own logical pathname translations for the SYS logical host. As of 1.0.53, you can now do this:

(sb-ext:set-sbcl-source-location "/path/to/sbcl/source/")

That takes care of establishing a mapping to the SBCL sources for you, and after that M-. will work as expected.

Clozure CL in the Mac App Store

xach@xach.com — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 01:20:09 GMT

From Matt Emerson on the Clozure CL mailing list:

Several people have wondered whether CCL or CCL-developed applications
would meet Apple's requirements for being distributed via the Mac App
Store.

There's only one way to test that...you have to submit an app to the
store.  So I did.  It was accepted.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clozure-cl/id489900618?ls=1&mt=12

Cool!

l1sp.org source code now available

xach@xach.com — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 00:32:19 GMT

You knew about l1sp.org, right? The redirect site I made a few years ago to make it easy to share links to Common Lisp documentation? Well, I just released its source code on github. Enjoy!

Peter Seibel's "manifest" screencast

xach@xach.com — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:11:44 GMT

Peter gives an introduction to his "manifest" online documentation browser.