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The Lisp kernel is the executable that you run to use Lisp. It doesn't actually contain the entire Lisp implementation; rather, it loads a heap image which contains the specifics—the "library", as it might be called if this was a C program. The kernel also provides runtime support to the heap image, such as garbage collection, memory allocation, exception handling, and the OS interface.
The Lisp kernel file has different names on different
platforms. See
Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions”. On all
platforms the lisp kernel sources reside
in ccl/lisp-kernel.
This section gives directions on how to rebuild the Lisp kernel from its source code. Most Clozure CL users will rarely have to do this. You probably will only need to do it if you are attempting to port Clozure CL to a new architecture or extend or enhance its kernel in some way. As mentioned above, this step happens automatically when you do
? (rebuild-ccl :full t)
The Clozure CL kernel can be bult with the following widely available tools:
cc or gcc- the GNU C compiler
ld - the GNU linker
m4 or gm4- the GNU m4 macro processor
as - the GNU assembler (version 2.10.1 or later)
make - either GNU make or, on FreeBSD, the default BSD make program
In general, the more recent the versions of those
tools, the better; some versions of gcc 3.x on Linux have
difficulty compiling some of the kernel source code correctly
(so gcc 4.0 should be used, if possible.) On OSX, the
versions of the tools distributed with XCode should work fine;
on Linux, the versions of the tools installed with the OS (or
available through its package management system) should work
fine if they're "recent enough". On FreeBSD, the installed
version of the m4 program doesn't support
some features that the kernel build process depends on; the
GNU version of the m4 macroprocessor (called
gm4 on FreeBSD) should be installed.
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