Armed Bear Common Lisp is a conforming implementation of ANSI X3J13 Common Lisp that runs in a Java virtual machine. It compiles Lisp code directly to Java byte code for execution.
Armed Bear Common Lisp is distributed under the GNU General Public License with a classpath exception (see "Classpath Exception" below).
A copy of GNU General Public License (GPLv2) is included in this
distribution, in
We have modified our GPLv2 license section 13 to read:
13. Linking this library statically or dynamically with other
modules is making a combined work based on this library. Thus, the
terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the
whole combination.
The following paragraph details the "classpath exception" which ABCL
allows as an exception to the statement about linking libraries.
As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give
you permission to link this software with independent modules to
produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these
independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting
executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet,
for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the
license of that module. An independent module is a module which is
not derived from or based on this software. If you modify this
software, you may extend this exception to your version of the
software, but you are not obligated to do so. If you do not wish to
do so, delete this exception statement from your version.
We recommend using podman over docker for political reasons, but the
surface syntax is identical so if you must, just substitute docker
for podman
in the following examples.
With podman installed, one may execute:
podman build -t YOURID/abcl .
podman run -it YOURID/abcl
to get something like
illin:~/work/abcl$ podman run -it YOURID/abcl
VM settings:
Max. Heap Size (Estimated): 3.89G
Using VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM
Armed Bear Common Lisp 1.9.2
Java 17.0.2 Oracle Corporation
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM
Low-level initialization completed in 0.432 seconds.
Startup completed in 2.246 seconds.
Type ":help" for a list of available commands.
CL-USER(1):
To install Quicklisp for ABCL in the container run:
podman run -t YOURID/abcl abcl \
--batch --load /home/abcl/work/abcl/ci/install-quicklisp.lisp
See
After you have downloaded a binary release from either the
distributed Maven POM graph or from
abcl.org archive unpack it into its own
directory. To run ABCL directly from this directory, make sure the
Java executable (java
) is in your shell's path. Java 8, 11, 17 are
strongly supported by ABCL, but others may work with a little elbow
grease.
To start ABCL, simply issue the following command:
cmd$ java -jar abcl.jar
which should result in output like the following
Armed Bear Common Lisp 1.9.2
Java 17.0.7 OpenJDK Porters Group
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM
Low-level initialization completed in 0.107 seconds.
Startup completed in 0.493 seconds.
CL-USER(1):
Yer now at the interactive ABCL "Read Eval Print Loop" (REPL): hacks 'n glory await.
See the section headed "SLIME" for instructions to connect to this repl from Emacs.
ABCL may be built from its source code by executing the build
instructions
To build, one must have a Java 8, 11, or 17 openjdk installed locally. Just the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) isn't enough, as you need the Java compiler ('javac') to compile the Java source of the ABCL implementation.
Download a binary distribution Ant version 1.7.1 or greater. Unpack the files somewhere convenient, ensuring that the 'ant' (or 'ant.bat' under Windows) executable is in your path and executable.
Then simply executing
cmd$ ant
To use Maven, download it, ensure the mvn
executable is in your
PATH and then
cmd$ mvn -Dmaven.test.skip=true install
from the directory containing the
The build may be customized by copying