When I first started in Lisp, one of my early questions too was, "how do you make an executable?" For a seasoned Lisper, that question might seem foreign, but it makes perfect sense to a C programmer.

I asked the question on Usenet, trying to explain that not everyone I wanted to give programs to had Lisp on their computer.

In response, someone tried to persuade me that you don't do such things with Lisp. Someone else turned out to be a Franz salesman asking, "which platforms are you talking about that don't have Lisp? we can supply Lisp on any platform!"

This always puzzled me too. Admittedly it's less of an issue now that we can deploy programs over the web. But it's still kind of weird.

Here's my speculative answer. The classic Lisp programmer doesn't care that much about building software for end users. He's more interested in amusing himself and, occasionally, other Lisp programmers.

I don't mean to slam Lisp (which I love) or Lisp programmers (I am one). But I believe I have observed evidence of the above.

What a great quote !

The lisp environment is basically the run-time library for lisp programs. In some cases, that run-time can be statically linked. In others, it can't.

You wouldn't find this confusing wrt C programs, so why is it a hard concept wrt Lisp programs?

But as it stands now all we hear is complaints that lisp community is bunch of jerks - the answers people get for this simple question is one of the reason why people think that the lisp community is not friendly.

The author of the original complaint clearly didn't. As he wrote: "I asked the question on Usenet, trying to explain that not everyone I wanted to give programs to had Lisp on their computer."

Lisp is the run-time for lisp "executables". Just as one can't run a C executable that depends on a dynamically loaded libc on a machine that doesn't have a dynamically loadable libc, one can't run a lisp executable without the relevant run-time.

This isn't an odd concept. Many windows programs depend on dlls.

That was ten years ago. I understand Lisp systems quite a bit better now, but I maintain that it is a valid question. Why? You have made the point that C programs can be built to rely upon dynamic libraries, and indeed they can, and this is similar to Lisp programs relying upon the Lisp runtime.

However, C programs can also be built statically, and not have to rely upon additional libraries being present. This is not only possible, but fairly common, especially for simple programs.

If a Lisp novice is trying to build, say, "Hello World," and expects a static executable as a result, why is that so much to ask? In fact, it is a lot to ask of Lisp, but if you are new to Lisp, you are not likely to understand why.

I wouldn't expect a novice C programmer to write "Hello, World" such that it depends upon dynamic libraries; moreover, a novice ought to be able to stay busy learning C and writing ostensibly useful programs for quite a while without doing dynamic linking.

Unfortunately, it seems that too many Lisp novices don't get the answer that you have provided (which is quite a useful answer). Instead, their question is brushed off as irrelevant. At least this has been the case in the past; I could not say if anything has changed.

When someone says "I'm a C programmer", as most folks asking about "lisp executables" on comp.lang.lisp do, I think that it's reasonable to assume that they've heard of and understand dynamic libraries.

Some lisps have static linking, some don't. I'm sorry that this was a show stopper for you.

Would an "install shield" builder, as is typically used for windows programs, have helped?

I don't suppose that you had the same reaction to Java, Python, Perl, awk, sed, tcl....

Why lispers are so elitist? Lisp is good not because it is the hardest language to learn, it is actually quite easy to pick up basic stuff, lisp is good because it is very powerful. Why make it harder for novices to try this language? This is not the way to develop the community.

However, now the goal posts are moving.

The original question was how to deploy a lisp program. That typically requires the relevant run times, just as it does in every other language that uses dynamic linking and/or interpretation. (Emacs is not required to run lisp. Heck, it isn't even required to write it. Likewise, slime is a development convenience. If it's too much trouble, don't bother.)

I mentioned other languages to demonstrate that the problem is not lisp-specific.

To write a program in any language, someone has to install a compiler or interpreter and their dependencies. Folks who can't/won't do that themselves are stuck with whatever came with their system.

Again, this is not lisp-specific.

It would be nice if a reasonable lisp came pre-installed as part of linux distributions. But, like lots of other languages, it doesn't.

If you can't or won't install runtimes, there are lots of things that you can't deploy. (That's why I asked about an installation system to help automate this work.) If you can't or won't install a compiler and/or interpreter, there are lots of languages that you can't write.

How do I deploy a lisp application to an end user when all I know is his operating system?

If you don't know how to do that try to google "LISP compiler" Click first link "Free Common LISP Interpreters, Compilers and Development Systems ..."

For UNIX try "CMU Common Lisp Compiler" For Windows try "Ufasoft Lisp Studio"

LISP people don't try to hold your hand and point out every last step on the path but he gave you lot's of useful information if you are willing to spend a few seconds trying to understand what they said.

PS: As soon as you start complaining about not getting enough info they stop caring. But if you asked what a good LISP compiler for windows was they would probably answer your question.

In that light, yes, Java is suboptimal. However, installing the JRE is pretty straightforward for end-users. Many users even already have the JRE installed. Asking an end-user to install CLisp is a whole other kettle of fish.

It's really sad, as lisp would probably also be great for desktop development. I mean it's not the problem of lisp - but it's unfortunately still a show-stopper for typical windows application developers.

This seems to be true regardless of the source language(s) of said application.

There are some nice tools to build said setup programs. That's why I asked whether they would be useful.

If I develop an application can a user download an exe which installs the requirements and have the application run after clicking an entry in the start menu?

I guess if it would for example install the clisp environment (if it's not installed already) and binds files with lisp extensions to it so they get executed on click that could be sufficient already. Do you know of a ready-to-use tool which does that already?