ECL is a fantastic ANSI Commnon Lisp implementation that aims at embedding. It allows us to build Lisp runtime into C/C++ code as external library. That means you can both call C code from Lisp runtime and call Lisp code form the C/C++ part. In this article we focus on how to call Lisp procedures from the C/C++ side, you may also achieve the reversed process by inlining C/C++ code in ECL, but that's beyond our discussion here. Generally, this one-side work is fairly enough to enable us to exhaust any power of both Lisp and C/C++.

This article shows how you can embed ECL into a Qt project, and serve as the kernel of that program. I hope that can serve as a common example, or tutorial, for the one who want to know about the true power of ECL, and perhaps that awesome guy is you. At least we will show you that the ability to hybrid is what makes ECL different from other implementations. And if one day you need that power, you know where you gonna head for.

I know I should shoot the code and demo quickly, but let the theory come first, just for those who don't understand why we are doing this.

What we are doing is just an instance of mixed-language programming. That means you will be writing codes in different languages and glue them together to combine a program. Usually, the product program would appear to be a peanut, the kernel is written in language A and the nutshell written in language B. The most frequent combination is C++ and Lua, in game programming. This enables us to take advantage of both language A and B. But in this case we are hybridizing C++ and Common Lisp, both aiming at building large software system, an we are sure to gain even more benifits here.

Common Lisp is a masterpiece, but it lacks a good GUI toolkit. Well, if you work on Linux you definitely can take a shot on packages like CL-GTK or CommonQt, and someone will suggest you to use another package called EQL, the Qt4 binding for ECL. But any of these GUI tools look coarse on my Mac, with Retina screen. I don't want to spend my scholarships on Lispworks, so I must find another way to enable Lisp in GUI-related programming. Finally I ended up in here. The hybrid is no compromise, since I can develop fancy GUI interface without losing the power of Lisp.

We can see more benifits that are shown below:

1. Live hotpatching. Common Lisp is a dynamic language, so it allows you to add new components at runtime. That means you can upgrade your program without re-compiling or even restart. In more advanced discussions, you may even recompile your C/C++ functions. So embedded ECL could even change the host language.
2. With the most powerful macro system, Lisp is natively designed for complex system designing. Different from light-weight languages like Python and Lua, Lisp is suitable for huge programs. So you can always focus on Lisp, instead of seeking for help from language B. You can also use Lisp environment as a direct DSL interpreter so that you needn't write one yourself.
3. Efficiency. There are other approaches to combine Lisp runtime with other languages, like using pipes, channels, sockets or temporary files. These are never elegant solutions, since you can only read the output by Lisp runtime manually and there's no direct access to the Lisp runtime memory. And you have to string-parse each Lisp output. So this is neither quick nor efficient. You may also use FFIs (Foreign Language Interfaces) and it's more common with the reverse direction, say call C from Lisp. Now the ECL approach is to save. The Lisp runtime in ECL shares the same part of memory with C/C++ side and there's direct way to fetch the return value of any Lisp function calls. How can they achieve this magic? Well ECL compiles Lisp to C code or bytecode so that they get the same tone.
4. Stable and mature. ECL is currently the best for embedding. You may have heard of other implementations like Clasp, which works on LLVM and is compatible with C++. But it's not yet stable or ANSI-compatible hitherto. Meanwhile ECL has a long history and is already ready to use. When built with C++ compiler like g++ (flag –with-cxx), ECL also enables us to Call C++ functions. So stick to ECL.

I hope this should convince you that this could be a promising hybrid.

The embedding process of ECL can be pretty simple if you understand how it works. Unfortunately the ECL official documentation of this part is not quite clear at the moment, here are some example code in the example/embed directory. Thanks to Daniel Kochmański, he helped me through the way towards my first success of hybridding. I'm still a newbie here.

The example code is enough for understanding the process of hybridizing Lisp and C codes by ECL. There is absolutely a general approach and you can use it as a pattern in your development.

ECL achieves this by compiling itself into C libraries and link it to C runtime. There is two ways to go: static library and shared library. In this article we will take the first approach. For embedding, there are a few steps:

1. Write your Lisp files. (absolutely)
2. Compile your Lisp files.
3. Write a C/C++ file that includes the ECL library and boots the CL environment.
4. Link the runtime and compile the whole project into executables.

Easy enough, isn't it? Let me explain in detail.

The first step is nothing different than general Lisp development. You can either create your own package or not. (Just leave the naked lisp file.)

The second step, well, it's time for ECL to rock. We've got two approaches, which depend on whenever you use ASDF or not. If you do not want to use it, you may follow this code:

(compile-file "<YOUR-LISP-FILE>.lisp" :system-p t)
(c:build-static-library "<LIBRARY-NAME>"
                        :lisp-files '("<THE-OBJECT-FILE>.o")
                        :init-name "<INIT-NAME>")

The first line of code compiles your .lisp file into a .o object file, say, <THE-OBJECT-FILE>.o. This file serves as the input for the next procedure. The c:build-static-library function is defined by ECL, it builds the object file into a static library, say, <LIBRARY-NAME>.a. We should pay attention to the init-name. You can define your init-name here as a string, and this is useful for step 3. We will head back when it happens.

If you choose to use ASDF, you can head for the asdf:make-build function. This can be seen in the Makefile in example:

hello.exe: hello.c hello-lisp.a
        $(CC) `ecl-config --cflags` -o $@ hello.c hello-lisp.a \
              `ecl-config --ldflags` -lecl

hello-lisp.a: hello-lisp.lisp
        ecl -norc \
            -eval '(require :asdf)' \
            -eval '(push "./" asdf:*central-registry*)' \
            -eval '(asdf:make-build :hello-lisp :type :static-library :move-here "./")' \
            -eval '(quit)'

clean:
        -rm -f hello-lisp.a hello.exe

And you may use asdf:defsystem in your lisp code. We will see this closer in my demo.

In the third step, we must dance with some C/C++ code. In your .c file where you want the ECL environment to run, you should #include <ecl/ecl.h> to make sure all the ECL symbols are linked. Then write some simple code to boot the environment:

/* Initialize ECL */
cl_boot(argc, argv);

/* Initialize the library we linked in. Each library
 * has to be initialized. It is best if all libraries
 * are joined using ASDF:MAKE-BUILD.
 */
extern void init_lib_HELLO_LISP(cl_object);
ecl_init_module(NULL, init_lib_HELLO_LISP);

The cl_ boot procedure boots the CL environment, it takes the right args from your main entry. Now take a look at the extern declaration. Remember last time I suggest you to notice the :init-name, now it's time to use it. If you took the first approach of building library and defined your own *init-name*, now the function name should be the same with it. And if you didn't define your init-name, now the name convention should be: init_lib_<FILE_NAME_OF_THE_LIBRARY>. Say, if the static library named "hello-world–all-systems.a", then you write init_lib_HELLO_WORLD__ALL_SYSTEMS for the function name.

Notice: In C++, you should encapsule the extern code in an extern "C" block:

extern "C"{
extern void init_lib_HELLO_LISP(cl_object);
}

To make the link process complete. This has something to do with the naming convention that differs from C to C++. In general ECL exports symbols following C naming convention to allow seamless FFI to it from C and other languages. C++ does some weird name mangling.So if you want to call C functions from C++, you have to declare them in C++ that way indeed. The function is used by procedure ecl_init_module to load all of your user-defined Lisp symbols. Then you are freely to call your Lisp code in C/C++.

The forth step builds the whole project. So it acquires all of your C/C++ files, libraries and the ECL library. All of the work can be easily done if you are familiar with Makefile. See the example above.

"How can I call the Lisp functions I wrote?" This should be the most urgent question you may ask. The ECL manual describes most of the functions in the Standards chapter. Apparently most of the Lisp functions, or macros have been maped into C functions, with some name convention. For example the [[https://common-lisp.net/project/ecl/static/manual/re02.html][cl_ eval]] means the corresponding Lisp code "eval". Most of the ANSI-defined procedure has the naming convention of using cl_ as prefix. So you can easily find the primitive symbol you need.

But perhaps the problem you most concern is:

1. How can I call MY Lisp functions in C/C++?
2. How can I translate the return value into C/C++ objects?

For the first question I suggest you to use the cl_eval function. The reason is it's simple and extensible. For the safety reasons you may use cl_funcall or cl_safe_eval. But none of them is as universal as cl_eval. The cl_funcall, as its name means, can only call functions and cannot be used to call macros. And cl_safe_eval requires more parameters in order to handle potential errors that may occur on the Lisp side. But here since I don't mean to make my code productive so I won't care about the safety or convenience. I wrote a friendlier version of cl_eval and you can call lisp code like this:

cl_eval("mapcar", list_foo, "(lambda (x) (princ x))");

And that's nearly Lisp code in appearance.

So let's head for the cl_eval. Its signature is:

cl_object cl_eval(cl_object);

It receives a cl_object and returns a cl_object. Hmm. Now you should get knowledge of how ECL manipulate Common Lisp Objects before wondering what cl_object is.

Quite simple. ECL encapsules any Lisp object into the same structure cl_object. It's a C union whose definition can be seen in object.h, line 1011. So you don't need to worry about using different types to capture the return value.

Translating C strings to cl_object is trivial: use the c_string_to_object function:

cl_object c_string_to_object (const char * s)

You just write the Lisp form in C string and the function will create Lisp object for you. So you may write

cl_eval(c_string_to_object("(princ \"hello world\")"));

To get your first hybrid-call.

The second question can be a little tough due to lack of documentation. And there's another naming convention.

Generally, you may use the ecl_to_* family to convert the cl_object to primitive C data, here is some regular examples:

char ecl_to_char(cl_object x);
int ecl_to_int(cl_object x);
double ecl_to_double(cl_object x);

I've said that these functions could only help convert cl_object to primitive C data. No array, and no string. The ECL API didn't provide them officially. So we have to implement them manually, sorry to say that. (If I missed something, correct me.)

I would show two trivial yet useful functions that may help you. The first one helps you to traverse Lisp List:

auto cl_list_traverse=[](auto& cl_lst, auto fn){
    while(!Null(cl_lst))
    {
        fn(cl_car(cl_lst));
        cl_lst=cl_cdr(cl_lst);
    }
};

This is implemented in C++ with the convenience of C++14 standard. Can be rewritten in C like this:

void cl_list_traverse(cl_object cl_lst, void(*fn)(cl_object)){
    while(!Null(cl_lst))
    {
        fn(cl_car(cl_lst));
        cl_lst=cl_cdr(cl_lst);
    }
};

Usage example:

void print_element(cl_object obj){
    printf("%d\n", ecl_to_int(obj));
}
list_traverse(foo_list, print_element);

And the second one converts the cl_object into C++ *std::string*.

std::string to_std_string(cl_object obj){
    std::string val;
    auto & str=obj->string;
    for(unsigned long i=0;i<str.fillp;i+=1)
       val+=*(typeof(str.elttype) *)(str.self+i);
    return val;
}

When you are using these functions to convert a cl_object to C/C++ objects, you have to know exactly what the return value is. That means, if you are trying to call ecl_to_int on a cl_object, you should be clear that the cl_object IS an integer. And for some complicate situation, a cl_object could contain more than one type at the same time. For example, if you call a function that returns a list of strings, say '("hello" "lisp") then the corresponding cl_object can both contain a string (on its car position) and a list (on its cdr position). Call cl_car and you get a cl_object containing a string, and you can call to_std_string on that object to get a C++ string. I mean, you should figure out that before you code. The secret is to just think you are still in Lisp.

Now it's time to head for our ultimate goal: let Lisp rock with Qt! We have had enough knowledge of embedding ECL into C++ code in the former chapters and Qt is nothing but C++. So the work should be trivial. Sounds this is true but, there's still many things to be solved. I have stuggled much about them but now I can just write down the final progress and pretend this is simple.

The first one is, how to build a Lisp package system, instead of compiling a naked Lisp file or a single package.

A common question heard from the Common Lisp newcomers is:

How to create my own application with Common Lisp?

Numerous concepts like packages, Quicklisp, modules and ASDF bring the confusion, which is only deepened by a wide range of implementations and foreign to the new programmer developing paradigm of working on a live image in the memory.

This post is a humble attempt to provide a brief tutorial on creating a small application from scratch. Our goal is to build a tool to manage document collection. Due to the introductory nature of the tutorial we will name our application "Clamber".

We will start with a quick description of what should be installed on the programmer's system (assumed operating system is Linux). Later we will create a project boilerplate with the quickproject, define a protocol for the software, write the application prototype (ineffective naive implementation), provide the command line interface with Command Line Option Nuker. This is where the first part ends.

Second part will be published on McCLIM blog and will show how to create a graphical user interface for our application with McCLIM.

Afterwards (in a third part in next ECL Quarterly) we will take a look into some considerations on how to distribute the software in various scenarios:

• Common Lisp developers perspective with Quicklisp,
• ordinary users with system-wide package managers with ql-to-deb,
• source code distribution to clients with Qucklisp Bundles,
• binary distribution (closed source) with ADSF prebuilt-system,
• as a shared library for non-CL applications with ECL.

Obviously a similar result may be achieved using different building blocks and all choices reflect my personal preference regarding the libraries I use.

Before we jump into the project creation and actual development I want to talk a little about the software distribution. We may divide our target audience in two groups – programmers and end users. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference.

Programmers want to use our software as part of their own software as a dependency. This is a common approach in FOSS applications, where we want to focus on the problem we want to solve, not the building blocks which are freely available (what kind of freedom it is depends on the license). To make it easy to acquire such dependencies the Quicklisp project was born. It is a package manager.

End users aren't much concerned about the underlying technology. They want to use the application in the most convenient way to them. For instance average non-programming Linux user would expect to find the software with theirs system distribution package manager. Commercial client will be interested in source code with all dependencies with whom the application was tested.

Proposed solution is to use Quicklisp during the development and bundle the dependencies (also with Quicklisp) when the application is ready. After that operation our source code doesn't depend on the package manager and we have all the source code available, what simplifies further distribution.

Notion of "system" is unknown to the Common Lisp specification. It is a build-system specific concept. Most widely used build-system in 2016 is ASDF. System definition is meant to contain information essential for building the software – application name, author, license, components and dependencies. Unfortunately ADSF doesn't separate system definitions from the source code and asd format can't be considered declarative. In effect, we can't load all system definitions with certainty that unwanted side-effects will follow.

We will only outline steps which are necessary to configure the development environment. There are various tutorials on how to do that which are more descriptive.

1. Install Emacs and SBCL¹:

   These two packages should be available in your system package manager (if it has one).

2. Install Quicklisp:

   Visit https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/ and follow the instructions. It contains steps to add Quicklisp to Lisp initialization file and to install and configure SLIME. Follow all these instructions.

3. Start Emacs and run Slime:

   To run Slime issue M-x slime in Emacs window.

These steps are arbitrary. We propose Linux + SBCL + Emacs + Quicklisp + SLIME setup, but alternative configurations are possible.

Quickproject is an excellent solution for this task because it is very simple tool with a well defined goal – to simplify creating basic project structure.

The simplest way of creating a new one is loading the quickproject system with Quicklisp and calling the appropriate function. Issue the following in the REPL:

(ql:quickload 'quickproject)
(quickproject:make-project #P"~/quicklisp/local-projects/clamber/"
                           :depends-on '(#:alexandria)
                           :author "Daniel Kochmański <daniel@turtleware.eu>"
                           :license "Public Domain")

That's it. We have created a skeleton for our project. For now, we depend only on alexandria – public domain utility library. List of dependencies will grow during the development to reflect our needs. Go to the clamber directory and examine its contents.

Now we will customize the skeleton. I prefer to have one package per file, so I will squash package.lisp and clamber.lisp into one. Moreover, README.txt will be renamed to README.md, because we will use markdown format for it.

To avoid clobbering the tutorial with unnecessary code we put only interesting parts here. Complete steps are covered in the application GIT repository available here:

https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/dkochmanski/clamber

We propose to clone the repository and track the progress with the subsequent commits and this tutorial.

Here is our application Clamber informal specification:

• Application will be used to maintain a book collection,
• Each book has associated meta-information (disregarding the underlying book file format),
• Books may be organized with tags and shelves,
• Book may be only on one shelf, but may have multiple tags,
• Both CLI and GUI interfaces are a required,
• Displaying the books is not part of the requirements (we may use external programs for that).

There are various solutions which enable creation of standalone binaries. The most appealing to me is Clon: the Command-Line Options Nuker, which has a very complete documentation (end-user manual, user manual and reference manual) , well thought API and works on a wide range of implementations. Additionally, it is easy to use and covers various corner-cases in a very elegant manner.

Our initial CLI (Command Line Interface) will be quite modest:

% clamber --help
% clamber add-book foo \
  --tags a,b,c \
  --shelf "Favourites" \
  --meta author "Bar" title "Quux"  
% clamber del-book bah
% clamber list-books
% clamber list-books --help
% clamber list-books --shelf=bah --tags=drama,psycho
% clamber show-book bah