SBCL - Does not include readline support

[perhje@…]

The Macports version of SBCL does not support readline. Makes interactive usage somewhat painful.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

Please remember to fill in the Port field and cc the maintainers.

[easye]

Replying to perhje@…:

The Macports version of SBCL does not support readline. Makes interactive usage somewhat painful.

I suggest the use of lang/slime for any serious interactive use.

[easye]

Or use sysutils/rlwrap.

Upon investigation, SBCL has no support in its distribution for compiling with readline, instead its developers would probably point to SLIME and/or rlwrap as I have done.

Therefore, I am marking this as "wontfix". I am open to arguments or patches if someone wishes to make them.

[perhje@…]

Fair enough. I checked on the SBCL mailing lists, and found the following incantations that should solve the problem too. But unfortunately the linedit install will not work (craps out during compilation) but I'm not sure that's a MacPorts issue.

(require :asdf-install) (asdf-install:install :linedit) ;first-time installation only (require :linedit) ;if already installed (linedit:install-repl)

[joaogeada (Joao Geada)]

This is not a port problem, or even a sbcl issue. It is all on how each individual user wants to customize his working environment. I personally do not use linedit as I dislike its deep and complex dependency chain. Instead I use 'sb-readline, which also integrates readline into the read loop.

To install, download the latest version of sb-readline.tar.gz (look on ​http://www.cliki.net/sb-readline ). You'll need to untar it, and it the sb-readline.lisp file and replace:

(eval-when (:compile-toplevel :load-toplevel :execute)
  (load-1-foreign "/lib/libncurses.so")
  (load-1-foreign "/lib/libreadline.so"))

with

(eval-when (:compile-toplevel :load-toplevel :execute)
  (load-shared-object "/opt/local/lib/libncurses.dylib")
  (load-shared-object "/opt/local/lib/libreadline.dylib"))

to make it MacPorts compatible. Then tar everything back up and proceed with the install as follows:

(require :asdf)
(require :asdf-install)
(asdf-install:install "sb-readline.tgz")

Then to use it, this is what I have on my $HOME/.sbclrc file:

(when (interactive-stream-p *terminal-io*)
    (require :asdf)
    (require :sb-readline))