Steel Bank Common Lisp has a new version out. I haven’t been writing much Common Lisp lately so I haven’t kept the software up to date. SBCL makes a new release every month and I always compile from source so it takes a tiny bit of effort to stay on the bleeding edge. Despite their aggressive release schedule, SBCL is very slow to make major releases so when I saw that they’d released SBCL 2.0.0, I knew it was time to upgrade. There’s been a bunch of optimizations, enhancements, and bug fixes so be sure to follow the link to see what’s new.

As usual, the compilation and exhaustive tests ran without any problems. I fired up a Slime session and played around with it a bit. I’d forgotten what a pleasurable experience SBCL/Slime/Emacs can be. You do everything from the comfort of Emacs but still have the power of an industrial strength Lisp environment at your fingertips. If you’re already an Emacser and would like to try out Common Lisp, this combination is ideal: it’s all free—as in beer and freedom—and easy to install. You can even get SBCL binaries if you don’t want to compile your own but except for Linux and Windows, the binaries are usually a few (monthly) releases behind so it pays to compile your own if you’re on a Mac or Unix system.