This Raspberry Pi runs Clozure CL (short CCL), a extended and native Common Lisp compiler and runtime. CCL is free software published by Clozure Associates. Clozure CL is an excellent choice for the Raspberry Pi. It is reasonably small, has a fast compiler, fast startup and the compiler generates native ARM instructions. It implements the full Common Lisp standard, the full Common Lisp Object System and many extensions.

How to install Clozure CL - here I describe how to install the latest Clozure CL on the Raspberry Pi running Linux.

On top of Clozure CL the Raspberry Pi runs CL-HTTP, an extensive HTTP server written entirely in Common Lisp. CL-HTTP was originally written by John Mallery on and for the Symbolics Lisp Machine.

I got the Raspberry Pi on a friday late evening in august 2012 from Farnell (cost is £32.70).

David's CL-HTTP primer.

Tried the micro talespin story generator as a benchmark. The new Macbook Air is 30 times faster with CCL.

ECL 12.7.1, native code. MTS. Real time 0.817s. Run time 0.26s. Compile time 62s.

ECL 12.7.1, byte code. MTS. Real time 1.768s. Run time 0.77s. Compile time 3s.

ECL uses the byte code compiler after calling (ext:install-bytecodes-compiler).

CCL 1.9-dev, native code. MTS. Run time 0.449s. Compile time 5.63s.

With the byte code compiler, the execution times of ECL are okay and the compile time is fine. Still startup time for ECL is too long.

CCL hits the sweet spot: fast execution, fast compiler, fast startup.

Code sizes for MTS: Source 56222 bytes, ECL/BC 82120 bytes, ECL/CC 106816 bytes, CCL 120205bytes.

LispWorks 6.1 on the MacBook Air: Run time 0.006s. Compile time 0.15s. Code size 114309 bytes.