Linux Common Lisp Quickstart HOWTO

Due to some questions on #lisp, I decided to throw together a quick, step-by-step solution to setting up a basic, but working, Common Lisp installation on Linux. The implementation used will be SBCL

This HOWTO assumes basic linux knowledge as well as knowledge of your distro’s package management system.

Install SBCL from your distro’s repo or download binary build from SBCL website Install Emacs – I recommend Emacs-22 or 23. Again, for fast install, I recommend going with your distro packages – if you need/want specially patched version, you probably don’t need my hand-holding Install clbuild run cd clbuild; ./clbuild check and install any remaining dependencies. Depending on your distro SBCL packages, install local build of SBCL through ./clbuild compile-implementation sbcl . It will be used by clbuild after that and saved in ./clbuild/target Install SLIME: ./clbuild install slime

and configure it by adding result of ./clbuild slime-configuration to your emacs config. I recommend switching slime-autodoc to t Test it by running emacs and invoking M-x slime Now go over to Cliki and maybe entertain yourself to Practical Common Lisp

Update: 2010-04-10: Fixed links broken by lack of wildcard entry on sbcl.org