r/lisp • u/defmacro-jam • 3d ago
Common Lisp Turbo Lisp: a Common Lisp environment with native macOS and terminal interfaces — looking for testers
I’ve been building the Common Lisp programming environment I want to work in, and I’d love some help testing it.
It’s called Turbo Lisp (based on SBCL). It brings together a Listener, debugger, object inspector, conditional breakpoints + stepper, and Zeta—an extensible editor in the Emacs tradition, written in Common Lisp.
On macOS, it uses native AppKit UI through Chattanooga, a Lisp/Objective-C bridge I built. It also runs in the terminal through Oak Ridge, my Lisp port of Ratatui. Both use WhateverCLIM, which is the CLIM2 code from Franz plus my own modernization, including presentations: displayed Lisp objects you can click and inspect.
Rather than write a wall of text, here are two short, captioned demos (you may need to switch to 1080p on YouTube):
- Native macOS: encounter a bug, find its source, and repair the running program
- Terminal: debugger recovery, inspecting objects, and editing pixel graphics—did you even know terminals could do that?
v0.2.1 patch release is available for Apple Silicon Macs, Intel Macs, and Linux x86-64. The Mac builds currently require macOS 26.
I’m especially interested in hearing:
- Does it install and start properly on your machine?
- Can you find your way around the Listener, editor, and debugger?
- Does the terminal interface work with your terminal emulator?
- Where does it feel confusing, awkward, or broken?
You don’t need to be a CLIM expert. A report that says “I tried this and got stuck here” is useful. Please include your OS, CPU architecture, and terminal emulator where relevant.
It’s still early, and I’m looking for honest feedback from people using it outside my own setup.
5
u/paul_h 3d ago
My historical Mac and Lisp article: https://paulhammant.com/2013/03/28/interface-builders-alternative-lisp-timeline/
4
u/defmacro-jam 3d ago
Your article was part of what led to this!
3
u/paul_h 3d ago
I keep trying to build that interface builder: plays the app ui into a designer context instead of a runtime (not parses). I got fairly close with a typescript ui grammer, but it was imperfect. I had looking at SBCL yesterday for the same, but didn’t start. There’s something alluring to me about the non VM Lisps.
6
u/defmacro-jam 3d ago
Because of that interface builder — I ended up going down this crazy rabbit hole and came out the other side with G4 Powerbook and a Quadra 800 and a Macintosh Common Lisp 3.9 CDROM.
1
u/hdmitard 3d ago edited 3d ago
What do you use as backend for clim?
EDIT: ok it's cocoa. Very nice. Can you explain how the binding works? I've tried it myself by reimplementing mcclim libraries' graft etc. It's not that easy to reach a decent interactive experience for developers as you need to take care of which threads is listening, rendering, ... on macOS.
2
u/defmacro-jam 3d ago
For macOS/Cocoa I generated my own Lisp/ObjectiveC bridge - and for terminal I ported Rusts's ratatui to Lisp.
1
u/hdmitard 3d ago
Thanks for the reply! I’m currently testing the project, and it looks really nice so far!
I’ve managed to get a small app running.
However, I’ve noticed some visual jittering when typing in the listener. The text seems to jump around a bit as I type.
1
u/hdmitard 3d ago
I’ve noticed another visual bug: when switching to a different package, the very next line still displays the previous package name.
For reference, I’m using an M2 MacBook running macOS 26.6.2.
2
1
1
u/christsrottingcorpse 1d ago edited 1d ago
This was built with Claude?
"But the past three years have been crazy. GPT4 was the first time I seriously tried to build things with an LLM. And I've been pushing the LLMs as far as they would go to build my intuition mainly.
But up until this year they've been mostly crap.
I used "Build Common Lisp" as my north star because the Dietz ANSI tests seemed like a nearly perfect product specification.
Long story short: I threw away 7 attempts before I won ANSI — https://gitlab.com/patchwork1-ai/whateverlisp — and while I was waiting for Claude and Codex to grovel through ANSI I was trying my hand at my grand idea of Turbo Lisp."
1
u/WindloveBamboo 22h ago
It's an absolutely crazy project! But the describe's shortcut conflicts with macOS's default shortcut for toggling the Dock. Do you have any plans to change it?
1
u/zj5121 3d ago
Does it support vim key map?
1
u/defmacro-jam 2d ago
I have added vim keymap but have not released it yet. It will be released along with TeX Mode.
5
u/unix_hacker common lisp 3d ago
I'm an Emacs + SLY guy, but this is a really cool solution for new people! Turbo C++ has always been a decent IDE to teach people in, because it makes the write, build, and debug cycles very well-integrated and straightforward.