Installing CLISP on your own Computer

If you wish to install CLISP on your own machine

1. Download the appropriate current version from CLISP download
2. Uncompress (unzip or tar) to an appropriate directory
3. Read the README file and follow the directions for installation.

Here is some details on installing it under Windows.

1. Download the current windows version from CLISP download
2. Unzip to c:\
3. (Optional) If you want to change the initial configuration file, edit src/config.lisp, using any text editor. You don't need to do this to get CLISP to work well. If you do, then start lisp (lisp.exe -M lispinit.mem) and when the LISP prompt (> _) appears, eval the following expressions by typing them into Lisp.

   (without-package-lock ()
     (compile-file "src/config.lisp") 
     (load "src/config.fas"))
   (saveinitmem)
   (exit) 

4. Make it easy to invoke. To make it easy to start lisp do the following (i) create a batch file in the clisp directory (e.g., c:\clisp-2.31\clisp.bat) to call clisp:

   c:\clisp-2.31\base\lisp -B "C:/clisp-2.31/" -M "C:\clisp-2.31\base\lispinit.mem" 
   

   (ii) Add the clisp directory to your PATH. You can do this by opening the SYSTEM control panel, clicking on the ADVANCED tab. clicking on the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES button, finding the Path varialbe in the (lower) System Variables window, clicking the EDIT button, and adding "c:\clisp-2.31\" to the end of the string. Whew.
5. Test Lisp by strating it up. Enter a few s-expressions and see what happens.

[1]> (+ 2 3)
5
[2]> (print "hello world")
"hello world"
"hello world"

6. Use it. When you want to use lisp, you can cd to whatever directory you like and call Lisp. That way, when you load a file, the current directory will be the first one searched for the file.