Install and use LISP on Mac

Question

I've read many topics regarding this issue, but couldn't get it to an end. I want to be able to code in LISP on Mac, using Emacs and XLispStat. So far, I've installed Emacs with HomeBrew but I got stuck when installing XLispStat. Can someone detail the steps for doing this? I'll appreciate!

P.S.: This is the required installation for Lisp. If there is something easier to achieve on Mac, I'll try that as well!

Answer 1

I posted a similar answer on this question. Short version: your options for an OS X Lisp environment are LispBox, LispWorks personal (crippleware warning) or Emacs+SLIME via quicklisp/ELPA.

Since your comments imply that you're casting a pretty wide net for workable Common Lisp tools, I'll also mention that CLISP seems to be supported via various OS X ports/package managers and has a fairly comfortable REPL (you can, of course get the same in SBCL with Linedit).

EDIT: As Rainer and Vsevolod mention below, Clozure and MCLIDE also exist. I've used neither myself, so I can't give you any details (though Clozure has been recommended to me on multiple occasions).

Oh, and is there a possibility to write the code is some normal text editor and compile it somehow in the terminal?

Not in the way that I think you mean, but yes, you can write a .lisp file with Sublime or whatever, then sbcl your-file-here.lisp. Note that sbcl your-file-here.lisp starts a running Lisp instance with a REPL, and incurs all the overhead that implies. If you're dead set against Emacs, what you could do is run a REPL separately from your project directory, then just (load "file-you-changed.lisp") or (ql:quickload :your-project-name) every so often.

Answer 2

xlispstat can be compiled on Mac OS 10.8 and works perfectly fine. It needs a couple of little edits for the nitpicking compiler but works perfectly with XQuartz. The people who are telling you to use other systems don't know how well integrated xlispstat is for people doing numerical work.