Compiling Common Lisp to an executable

Question

I recently started learning Common Lisp using SBCL. How can I compile my Lisp programs into a Windows binary?

score 39 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 29 '13 at 08:30

39

Making hello.exe:

* (defun main () (print "hello"))

MAIN
* (sb-ext:save-lisp-and-die "hello.exe" :toplevel #'main :executable t)
[undoing binding stack and other enclosing state... done]
[saving current Lisp image into hello.exe:
writing 3160 bytes from the read-only space at 0x22000000
writing 2592 bytes from the static space at 0x22100000
writing 30134272 bytes from the dynamic space at 0x22300000
done]
> dir hello.exe
31,457,304 hello.exe
> hello.exe

"hello"

31 MB executable file!

answered Oct 29 '13 at 08:30

KIM Taegyoon

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Thanks, this is a good example of what Anton was talking about. Two questions, how would you create an executable from an existing lisp file and is it possible to get the executable to a smaller size? – James McMahon Jan 26 '14 at 15:45
7

@JamesMcMahon: smaller sizes are possible with some other CL implementations. For example Clozure CL, CLISP, LispWorks, Allegro CL, MKCL. Really small programs can be created with the commercial 'mocl' compiler (though currently not for windows), which only supports a large subset of Common Lisp and which then does not support runtime code loading, runtime compilation, full runtime evaluation, etc. With mocl you get tiny applications, but which are static - similar to what you would expect from a C compiler. It actually compiles to C code. – Rainer Joswig Nov 25 '14 at 14:03
You can just save an executable with no :toplevel , and then use that as your new “sbcl binary” to run scripts (with your dependencies already loaded). Just one big file, and instant startup on all scripts. – HappyFace Oct 09 '21 at 16:41

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 05 '13 at 12:44

16

Use SB-EXT:SAVE-LISP-AND-DIE. See http://www.sbcl.org/manual/#Saving-a-Core-Image for details.

answered Jan 05 '13 at 12:44

Anton Kovalenko

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could you provide more info? This points in the right direction but there is a lot of information to digest there for a Lisp newbie. – James McMahon Aug 05 '13 at 02:44

score 11 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 01 '18 at 01:58

11

(defun main ()
    (format t "Hello, world!~%"))

(sb-ext:save-lisp-and-die "hello-world.exe"
:executable t
:toplevel 'main)

edited Apr 01 '18 at 01:58

Morten Jensen

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answered Sep 29 '15 at 13:55

zxt

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score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 06 '13 at 14:18

9

There're several tools to do it. You can start with Buildapp.

answered Jan 06 '13 at 14:18

Vsevolod Dyomkin

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Compiling Common Lisp to an executable

4 Answers4

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