Manny8888 / NIL

Nim version of the Symbolics Lisp Machine

Nil Symbolics Lisp Machine emulator

This project is a way to learn more about Nim by translating the Symbolics lisp machine emulator.

Note that:

• The nimble file is useless. Simply run nim compile --checks:on --run src/NimMachine.nim for the moment.

• The runtime creates 2 logs to track what's happening. They are in the top level directory hard-coded as ivoryPageLog.log for memory reads and runLog.log for everything else. You can also run true > runLog.log ; true > ivoryPageLog.log ; nim compile --checks:on --run src/NimMachine.nim. If the log files are opened in a text editor with auto-reload, true > file clears the content of a file without clearing the inode which prevents the auto-reload from getting confused.

• The name/location of the band is hard-coded as ../Genera-8-5-xlib-patched.vlod. Finding the band is a Google/Duckduck/Bing easy search away.

The current strategy is to follow the world.c code to load the band in with the right values. Execution will follow later. The vlm tree/alpha-emulator branch is being instrumented (with many parts temporarily disabled (look for TEMP_DISABLED)) to check NIL against the original emulator.

Things to explore:

• ncurses (to start with) interface to present all the information spilled out. With tabs to inspect different aspects. Probably something tree-like for the torrent of information.

• Removed the initial data structure using variants. Currently adds complexity for no obvious gain. To be revisited when opcodes are actually executed.