SLIME: The Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs

SLIME is a Emacs mode for Common Lisp development. Inspired by existing systems such Emacs Lisp and ILISP, we are working to create an environment for hacking Common Lisp in.

This frugal page is an invitation to learn more about what's going on.

feature highlights

• slime-mode: An Emacs minor-mode to enhance lisp-mode with:
  • Code evaluation, compilation, and macroexpansion.
  • Online documentation (describe, apropos, hyperspec).
  • Definition finding (aka Meta-Point aka M-.).
  • Symbol and package name completion.
  • Automatic macro indentation based on &body.
  • Cross-reference interface (WHO-CALLS, etc).
  • ... and more.
• SLDB: Common Lisp debugger with an Emacs-based user interface.
• REPL: The Read-Eval-Print Loop ("top-level") is written in Emacs Lisp for tighter integration with Emacs. The REPL also has builtin "shortcut" commands similar those of the McCLIM Listener.
• Compilation notes: SLIME is able to take compiler messages and annotate them directly into source buffers (screenshot).
• Inspector: Interactive object-inspector in an Emacs buffer.

supported platforms

SLIME works with GNU Emacs versions 21 and 22 and with XEmacs version 21 on Unix, OSX, and Win32.

The currently supported Common Lisp implementations are:

• CMU Common Lisp (CMUCL)
• Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL)
• Clozure CL (a.k.a. OpenMCL)
• LispWorks
• Allegro CL
• CLISP
• Scieneer CL
• ECL
• Corman CL
• ABCL

downloading

We recommend that you use the CVS version.

You can download a cvs snapshot in tarfile format.

You can check out the latest version with:
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous:anonymous@common-lisp.net:/project/slime/cvsroot co slime

documentation

We have a manual (as ps.gz or pdf) that explains what SLIME can do and how to use it.

screencasts and tutorials

• Marco Baringer's SLIME video (150MB, 55 minutes).
• Yusuke Shinyama's SLIME on Linux (1.3MB).
• Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote an excellent tutorial for SLIME and CL-Music. The original document is no longer accessible but you can find most of it in Bill Clementson's Blog.

mailing list

The slime-devel@common-lisp.net mailing list is used for all SLIME discussions. This is where to ask questions, send patches, and generally participate in the development. The mailing list is also available via GMANE as group gmane.lisp.slime.devel both via a web interface and via the NNTP server news.gmane.org.

history

SLIME is an Extension of SLIM, which was written by Eric Marsden in mid-2003. Luke Gorrie and Helmut Eller took over development to create SLIME as a traditional "open-source project." Since then the hacking has continued at a rapid pace as many more hackers joined the fray.

A (hopefully) complete list of code contributors appears in the SLIME manual.

HTML style shamelessly stolen by Luke Gorrie from the sawfish homepage.
Any remaining HTML-conformance is solely due to Stephen Caldwell.
Last updated: 2008-02-15