Nekthuth: Connection with a Lisp

Nekthuth is the combination of a vim plugin and a common lisp library which enables vim users to start up or connect to a CL interpreter inside vim, and do interesting things with it.

• Form evaluation
• Tab completion
• Quick macroexpansion
• Extension to syntax highlighting
• Basic Debugger
• On the fly hyperspec rendering inside the vim window
• Extensible plugin architecture
• Connect to a remote lisp or boot one from inside vim
• Find and open source location of symbols under cursor

See the documentation for more in depth information, specifically the installation instructions to get started.

• New in 0.3.4 (17 January 2011)
  • Fixed some bugs in the connection code for NekthuthRemote.
  • Made it so window splitting is based on how wide your window currently is
  • Added g:nekthuth_updatetime (default 500) - sets how long vim waits when not moving cursor to check

• New in 0.3.3 (9 July 2009) (CL package only)
  • The way *package* was being handled was funky, and should be consistent across the reader/evaluator/senders now.

• New in 0.3.2 (28 June 2009)
  • Another bug where mcclim confused vim with syntax additions. Functions with ] or [ in them will no longer show up as highlighted.
  • Install.sh in the vim plugin was using the wrong environment variable

• New in 0.3.1 (27 June 2009)
  • Fixed a bug where loading up packages that defined symboles such as \ and ' would cause syntax additions to fail
  • Added plugin installation. See the manual for more information.
  • Fixed how the main thread and repl thread share sender data, which should translate into faster bootup times.

• New in 0.3 (7 April 2009)
  • Multiple return value (using values, such as in #'get-decoded-time) prints correctly in buffer
  • Fixed NekthuthInterrupt (0.2 broke it)
  • Function coloring and complete added for *package* functions and transitively used packages
  • Remote connection now checks the version correctly. This may be useful someday.
  • Added #'nekthuth:stop-remote to shut down the remote listener. See remote commands in the manual for more information
  • Find and open source locaton of symbol under cursor. See source location in the manual for more information

• New in 0.2 (4 January 2009)
  • Remote execution in an already running sbcl instance. See remote setup in the manual for more information.
  • Fixed ClHelp not opening a window upon failure

All lisp code is licensed under the Lisp Lesser General Public License (thanks franz!). All vim code is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 .

• Requires SBCL with threads
• Requires vim > 7.0 with +python
• Requires asdf
• I have no idea if it works in gvim, or windows, or solaris, or OSX, or...well just about anything other than my current setup (Gentoo + sbcl 1.0.15 + vim 7.1). Let me know how it goes for you!

I should really use a bug tracker, but for now I'd rather have it out there than spend that time. Current bug/patch submission is via email.

• Debugger doesn't work at all with things that would like to take input, such as the store-value restart
• Debugger has no concept of levels of debugging (but then, how could it if it doesn't take complex input)
• Using NekthuthSexp from inside a string has interesting consequences...
• Python 2.3 returns True on socket.makefile('r').closed, which confuses the nekthuth vim main read loop, meaning that you can't use the remote option if your python is < 2.4 currently (though local evaluation still works).
• If you pull up help, then close the help buffer, then pull up help on the same function, the buffer will be empty.
• If you declaim as such: (declaim (optimize (speed 3) (space 3) (debug 0))) and then (defun a () ()), and call (a 5), you have to kill the lisp process via another terminal.
• If you start-remote, then connect with a vim instance, then stop-remote, you can't start-remote again.

Number of unique bugs submitted via email/irc left until I consider this a real project so I should set up aforementioned tracker: 16

• Become more package aware (set the current package to the correct package of file editing for your thread). Re-color syntax for new symbols that become available.
• Separate SBCL and portable code
• Allow connections to machines other than the local one
• Improve Debugger (this is where the current effort is for 0.4)
  • Handle stepping
  • Handle interactive restarts
  • Handle variable listing
  • Handle watching
• Introspection mechanism
• Argument hints for functions (lambda list)
• Hints/completion for loop macro
• Define the concept of a project which maps to an asdf package for a given directory.

Other random ideas

• Plugins for omnicompletion

Please contact me either at frank@kank.net or through IRC on freenode in the #lisp or #nekthuth channel. I'm herbieB. Someday I'll have a mailing list...someday.

Find out more about me at http://frank.kank.net/