two co-existing projects

[Mike McDonald]

>To: lispos@math.gatech.edu
>Subject: Re: two co-existing projects
>From: marcus@cathcart.sysc.pdx.edu (Marcus G. Daniels)
>Date: 28 Apr 1997 17:31:01 -0700
>
>>>>>> "MM" == Mike McDonald <mikemac@titian.engr.sgi.com> writes:
>
>MM> There's plenty to do before we
>MM> need to muck with the lisp compiler. Eventually, we'd probably
>MM> want to transition to a completely free implementation like
>MM> CMU-CL. 
>
>More people behind one free compiler means less bugs in that compiler,
>and a slowing growing pool of people able to fix bugs in the compiler.

  I agree with this. I just don't think CMU-CL is quite ready for our
needs yet. I doesn't have threads yet and it hasn't been running on
Intel boxes all that long. I'd prefer that we'd wait a while before
we'd commit to it. Since ACL is free and robust, we can start a lot of
efforts now, especially in the apps area. Once CMU-CL has threads,
then we could switch to it. But threads really are nice to have for an
OS and the OS services, such as networking, file systems, and
windowing system, all need to be thread safe. We can begin those now
with ACL.  We also don't have any commitments from the CMU-CL on Intel
guys although I'd be surprised if they weren't interested.

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com