lispOS and persistent store

[David Gadbois]

   Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 19:33:11 -0700
   From: Luca Pisati <pisati@nichimen.com>

   I'm just trying to understand what are we trying to do here.

It is totally up in the air.  The are lots of exciting ideas floating
around.  Until someone sits down and actually does something, we are
mapping out the possibilities and arguing the benefits of various
approaches.  At some point, we'll need to articulate clear goals so
that we can get good work done and so newbies can get up to speed
quickly.

   1. A Lisp-Machine (a full featured Lisp based OS, with
      classic OS structure: file-system, network ....),
      running directly on some hardware, or lying on top
      of some kernel.

This is what I would like to see.  A single, object-oriented address
space where every capability is just a pointer dereference or a
function call away.

   2. A Virtual Lisp Machine, running on top of existing
      OS and hardware.

I'd like to view this as more of an engineering approach than a
fundamental design issue.  As existence proofs, we have Open Genera
and the various Smalltalk environments:  You hardly have to know that
there is some kind of hypervisor between you and the metal.

   3. A Lisp based OS with radically new approaches as
      substituting persistent objects to file system and so on ...

This is the sizzle that makes the whole project so appealing:  The
very ability to be able to consider such new ideas as "simple matters
of programming" rather than as major political and organizational
commitments.

--David