Armed Bear Common Lisp is distributed under the GNU GPL with Classpath exception. It was originally created as a component of the Armed Bear J editor, where it serves as an extension language (rather like Emacs Lisp for Emacs). It is now maintained as a standalone implementation.
ABCL runs quite well with SLIME, which allows you to run ABCL from within Emacs.
ABCL gives you access to all those methods in the Java runtime environment. This is implemented using the Java Reflection API. To call a static method, use the jstatic function:
(jstatic "gc" "java.lang.System") (jstatic "getProperty" "java.lang.System" "user.dir")
To obtain a reference to a Java method, call jmethod with the class name, method name, and parameter types:
(jmethod "java.lang.Runtime" "availableProcessors")
To invoke a (non-static) Java method, use jcall with the reference to the method, a reference to the invoked object, and the method arguments:
(jcall (jmethod "java.lang.Runtime" "availableProcessors") (jstatic "getRuntime" "java.lang.Runtime"))
To invoke a constructor, use jconstructor and jnew in place of jmethod and jcall.
(jnew (jconstructor "java.lang.Object"))
There are a fair number of (poorly) documented Java specific Lisp extensions in the JAVA package. Currently, reading the source to 'java.lisp' while experimenting with the REPL is probably the best way to come to an understanding of what is available.
Of common interest is the JAVA:JIMPLEMENTATION-INTERFACE function, which allows one to implement a Java interface in Common Lisp.
Alan Ruttenberg's JSS provides a more convenient syntax for calling Java.
This project is now hosted at common-lisp.net http://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/.
A pre-built JAR binary can be downloaded from
It can be utilized via
java -jar abcl.jar
To obtain the source tree from SVN, the command
svn checkout svn://common-lisp.net/project/armedbear/svn/trunk/abclwill create a directory named 'abcl' with the source tree.
The easiest way to build the source is to use the Java build tool Ant
cmd$ cd abcl; ant abcl.wrapper
this will compile ABCL, then creates an executable ('abcl.bat' under win32, 'abcl' otherwise) which then can be used to invoke the Bear.
A Trac instance for ABCL issues has been created on common-lisp.net. Unfortunately, it is read-only to non-members of common-lisp.net. TO submit issues, please post a message to the mailing list noted below.
ABCL developmers use the http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/armedbear-devel mailing list hosted on common-lisp.net. This supercedes the mailing list associated with armedbear-j development, which is still monitered for contributions.
A more convenient manner to read the mailing list from a web browser without subscribing can be found via the gmane.org NNTP interface for the 'gmane.editors.j.devel' group. You have to be subscribed to the list to post messages.
This page is linked from: araneida asdf Common Lisp implementation Distributed features Gentoo jss Linux MacOS X Marko Kocic mel-base Peter Graves Solaris trivial-sockets USOCKET win32 XCL CLiki pages can be edited by anyone at any time. Imagine a fearsomely comprehensive disclaimer of liability. Now fear, comprehensivelyMailing List