SBCL Crowdfunding at IndieGoGo

[nikodemus]

(I hope this doesn't violate any forum rules.)

Hi,

I have an SBCL crowdfunding campaign up at IndieGoGo. If you use SBCL, go take a look.

Cheers,

-- Nikodemus

[nikodemus]

So, the campaign has been a roaring success -- all initial goalposts have been hit in 3 days out of 19.

This means it was time for a new goal.

If the campaign reaches $12k, in addition to the SBCL specific work I will also implement Madeira, a new portability layer for Common Lisp implementations, focusing on threading and parts not covered by CFFI or USOCKET.

The current plan is for Madeira to support:

• Basic things like access to command-line arguments, environment, EXIT, etc.
• Bordeaux-Threads -like functionality, but better defined, with sharper edges.
• CAS. Remains to be seen how general I can make the support, though.
• Running external programs. (Probably somewhere between TRIVIAL-SHELL and SBCL's RUN-PROGRAM in functionality.)

Another way to describe Madeira would be to say that it should cover most everything that I keep having to #+sbcl when writing portable code.

Even if the full goal for Madeira is not be reached, any funds over $8k will be used towards implementing at least parts of it.

Gentle hacker, spread the word: it's not just SBCL users who stand to benefit now.

Thank You again, Everyone.

[smithzv]

Sorry, what does CAS stand for in this context?

[nuntius]

CAS = compare and swap
This is an atomic operation supported by most hardware.
Rather than "(when (= x 4) (setf x 5))", you write "(cas x 4 5)". This allows the test and set to occur without interference from other threads/processes but also without locking a mutex (which could block indefinitely).

[nikodemus]

Now taking a final run at the final goalpost! If $16k funding is reached, it's time to kiss the big compiler lock goodbye.

Again, Thank You Everyone,

-- Nikodemus