LispWorks
Software
LispWorks is computer software, a proprietary implementation and integrated development environment (IDE) for the programming language Common Lisp. LispWorks was developed by the UK software company Harlequin Ltd., and first published in 1989. Harlequin ultimately spun off its Lisp division as Xanalys Ltd., which took over management and rights to LispWorks. In January 2005, the Xanalys Lisp team formed LispWorks Ltd. to market, develop, and support the software.
LispWorks's features include:
- A native-code compiler and an interpreter for an extended ANSI Common Lisp
- An implementation of the Common Lisp Object System with support for the metaobject protocol
- Support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions
- Native threads and symmetric multiprocessing
- Unicode support: it can read and write files, and supports strings, so encoded
- Foreign language interface (FFI) to interface with routines written in C
- A Java interface
- The common application programming interface (CAPI) graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit, which provides native look-and-feel on Windows, Cocoa, GTK+, and Motif
- An Emacs-like editor; source code is included in the Professional edition
- A Lisp Listener, which provides a Common Lisp read-eval-print loop (REPL)
- A graphical debugger, inspector, stepper, profiler, class browser, etc.
- A facility to generate standalone executables and shared libraries; to reduce memory size, a tree shaker can be used to remove unused code and data
- On macOS, it provides a bridge to Objective-C for using Apple's Cocoa libraries
- Many of the libraries are written using the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) and can be extended by the user, by writing subclasses and new methods
The Enterprise edition also includes KnowledgeWorks, which supports rule-based or logic programming (including support for Prolog); the CommonSQL database interface; and a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) binding.
In September 2009, it was announced that LispWorks 6 would support concurrent threads and the CAPI graphics toolkit had been extended to support GTK+. LispWorks 6.1, released in January 2012, included many further enhancements to CAPI, such as support for anti-aliased drawing.
LispWorks ran on the spacecraft Deep Space 1. The application called RAX won the NASA Software of the Year award in 1999.
01Releases
| Date | Version | Company | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | alpha | Harlequin | Begun by British firm |
| 12 Sep 1989 | 1.0 | Harlequin | GUI with CLX, CLUE, and LispWorks toolkit |
| Dec 1991 | 3.0 | Harlequin | |
| 17 Mar 1997 | 4.0 | Harlequin | For Windows, GUI with CAPI, CLIM 2.0 |
| 06 Jan 1999 | 4.1 | Harlequin | With CORBA, Linux port |
| 19 Feb 2001 | 4.1.20 | Xanalys | |
| 19 Dec 2001 | 4.2 | Xanalys | No run time fees for applications on Windows |
| 05 May 2002 | 4.2.6 | Xanalys | |
| 30 Jun 2003 | 4.3 | Xanalys | First release for macOS, with Cocoa support |
| 08 Dec 2004 | 4.4 | Xanalys | |
| 15 Apr 2005 | 4.4.5 | LispWorks | |
| 31 Jul 2006 | 5.0 | LispWorks | 64-bit support, FreeBSD port |
| 27 Mar 2008 | 5.1 | LispWorks | |
| 06 Jan 2010 | 6.0 | LispWorks | With symmetric multiprocessing, Solaris on Intel port, CAPI for GTK+ |
| 27 Jan 2012 | 6.1 | LispWorks | High-quality drawing, 64-bit FreeBSD port |
| 05 May 2015 | 7.0 | LispWorks | ARM Linux, iOS, Android, full Unicode, Hobbyist Edition |
| 13 Nov 2017 | 7.1 | LispWorks | 64-bit iOS, ARM64 Linux |
| 14 Dec 2021 | 8.0 | LispWorks | Native support for Apple silicon Macs |
| 03 Mar 2025 | 8.1 | LispWorks | Support for Wayland and Gtk+ 3 |
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “LispWorks”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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