Git is perhaps the most widely used version control system today. It allows you to manage changes in code over small and large projects fast and efficiently.

Quicklisp is the standard Lisp package manager that allows you to retrieve and manage over a thousand libraries with a few keystrokes.

Bundled with Emacs are some very useful packages, the major ones being Slime , Magit , and Company .

Emacs is a very flexible and extensible editor that has been around for a long time. Due to its history and huge community, it is capable of covering pretty much any area of programming and more.

It lends itself very well both to absolute beginners of Lisp that just need a good starting point, as well as advanced users that want to minimise the time spent getting everything ready.

Portacle is a complete IDE for Common Lisp that you can take with you on a USB stick. It is multi-platform and can be run on Windows, OS X, and Linux. Since it does not require any complicated installation process, it is set up and running in no time.

How to Get It

Portacle is rather straight-forward to setup and use. All you need to do is extract an archive. After that, you can freely move its installation folder around and even take it with you on a memory stick.

If you are new to Emacs, Lisp, or both, you should also read the section after this one once you successfully completed the installation.

Windows Download the latest release and run it. It will ask you where to install it to, defaulting to your home folder. Note that you do not need to append portacle to the end of the path. After extraction, you can launch it by double-clicking the portacle.exe . Note that portacle.exe is tied to the portacle directory and needs everything within it to function properly. You can however create a shortcut to the exe to reach it more easily from your desktop.

Mac OS X Download the latest release and extract it. Due to "security" reasons on OS X you must then move the Portacle.app within the extracted directory into another directory like projects/ and back again using Finder. From then on you can launch it by double-clicking the Portacle.app . The first time you launch it, OS X is going to block the application as it is "from an unidentified developer." You need to open System Preferences, go to Security, and click the Open Anyway button to mark the application as trusted. After that it should work straight away. Note that you cannot copy the Portacle.app outside of the portacle directory. You must take the whole directory with you. You can however drag the app into your dock.