Known problems with SLIME -*- outline -*- * Common to all backends ** Caution: network security The `M-x slime' command has Lisp listen on a TCP socket and wait for Emacs to connect, which typically takes on the order of one second. If someone else were to connect to this socket then they could use the SLIME protocol to control the Lisp process. The listen socket is bound on the loopback interface in all Lisps that support this. This way remote hosts are unable to connect. ** READ-CHAR-NO-HANG is broken READ-CHAR-NO-HANG doesn't work properly for slime-input-streams. Due to the way we request input from Emacs it's not possible to repeatedly poll for input. To get any input you have to call READ-CHAR (or a function which calls READ-CHAR). * Backend-specific problems ** CMUCL The default communication style :SIGIO is reportedly unreliable with certain libraries (like libSDL) and certain platforms (like Solaris on Sparc). It generally works very well on x86 so it remains the default. ** SBCL The latest released version of SBCL at the time of packaging should work. Older or newer SBCLs may or may not work. Do not use multithreading with unpatched 2.4 Linux kernels. There are also problems with kernel versions 2.6.5 - 2.6.10. The (v)iew-source command in the debugger can only locate exact source forms for code compiled at (debug 2) or higher. The default level is lower and SBCL itself is compiled at a lower setting. Thus only defun-granularity is available with default policies. ** LispWorks On Windows, SLIME hangs when calling foreign functions or certain other functions. The reason for this problem is unknown. We only support latin1 encoding. (Unicode wouldn't be hard to add.) ** Allegro CL Interrupting Allegro with C-c C-b can be slow. This is caused by the a relatively large process-quantum: 2 seconds by default. Allegro responds much faster if mp:*default-process-quantum* is set to 0.1. ** CLISP We require version 2.49 or higher. We also require socket support, so you may have to start CLISP with "clisp -K full". Under Windows, interrupting (with C-c C-b) doesn't work. Emacs sends a SIGINT signal, but the signal is either ignored or CLISP exits immediately. On Windows, CLISP may refuse to parse filenames like "C:\\DOCUME~1\\johndoe\\LOCALS~1\\Temp\\slime.1424" when we actually mean C:\Documents and Settings\johndoe\Local Settings\slime.1424. As a workaround, you could set slime-to-lisp-filename-function to some function that returns a string that is accepted by CLISP. Function arguments and local variables aren't displayed properly in the backtrace. Changes to CLISP's C code are needed to fix this problem. Interpreted code is usually easer to debug. M-. (find-definition) only works if the fasl file is in the same directory as the source file. The arglist doesn't include the proper names only "fake symbols" like `arg1'. ** Armed Bear Common Lisp The ABCL support is still new and experimental. ** Corman Common Lisp We require version 2.51 or higher, with several patches (available at http://www.grumblesmurf.org/lisp/corman-patches). The only communication style currently supported is NIL. Interrupting (with C-c C-b) doesn't work. The tracing, stepping and XREF commands are not implemented along with some debugger functionality.