path: root/base-target-features.lisp-expr

;;;; -*- Lisp -*-

;;;; tags which are set during the build process and which end up in
;;;; CL:*FEATURES* in the target SBCL, plus some comments about other
;;;; CL:*FEATURES* tags which have special meaning to SBCL or which
;;;; have a special conventional meaning
;;;;
;;;; Note that the recommended way to customize the features of a
;;;; local build of SBCL is not to edit this file, but instead to
;;;; tweak customize-target-features.lisp. If you define a function
;;;; in customize-target-features.lisp, it will be used to transform
;;;; the target features list after it's read and before it's used.
;;;; E.g. you can use code like this:
;;;;    (lambda (list)
;;;;      (flet ((enable (x) (pushnew x list))
;;;;    	 (disable (x) (setf list (remove x list))))
;;;;        #+nil (enable :sb-show)
;;;;        (enable :sb-after-xc-core)
;;;;        #+nil (disable :sb-doc)
;;;;        list))
;;;; By thus editing a local file (one which is not in the source
;;;; distribution, and which is in .cvsignore) your customizations
;;;; will remain local even if you do things like "cvs update",
;;;; will not show up if you try to submit a patch with "cvs diff",
;;;; and might even stay out of the way if you use other non-CVS-based
;;;; methods to upgrade the files or store your configuration.

;;;; This software is part of the SBCL system. See the README file for
;;;; more information.
;;;;
;;;; This software is derived from the CMU CL system, which was
;;;; written at Carnegie Mellon University and released into the
;;;; public domain. The software is in the public domain and is
;;;; provided with absolutely no warranty. See the COPYING and CREDITS
;;;; files for more information.

(
 ;;
 ;; features present in all builds
 ;;

 ;; our standard
 :ansi-cl :common-lisp
 ;; FIXME: Isn't there a :x3jsomething feature which we should set too?
 ;; No. CLHS says ":x3j13 [...] A conforming implementation might or
 ;; might not contain such a feature." -- CSR, 2002-02-21

 ;; our dialect
 :sbcl

 ;; Douglas Thomas Crosher's conservative generational GC (the only one
 ;; we currently support for X86).
 ;; :gencgc used to be here; CSR moved it into
 ;; local-target-features.lisp-expr via make-config.sh, as alpha,
 ;; sparc and ppc ports don't currently support it. -- CSR, 2002-02-21

 ;; We're running under a UNIX. This is sort of redundant, and it was also
 ;; sort of redundant under CMU CL, which we inherited it from: neither SBCL
 ;; nor CMU CL supports anything but UNIX (and "technically not UNIX"es
 ;; such as *BSD and Linux). But someday, maybe we might, and in that case
 ;; we'd presumably remove this, so its presence conveys the information
 ;; that the system isn't one which follows such a change.
 :unix

 ;;
 ;; features present in this particular build
 ;;

 ;; Setting this enables the compilation of documentation strings
 ;; from the system sources into the target Lisp executable.
 ;; Traditional Common Lisp folk will want this option set.
 ;; I (WHN) made it optional because I came to Common Lisp from
 ;; C++ through Scheme, so I'm accustomed to asking
 ;; Emacs about things that I'm curious about instead of asking
 ;; the executable I'm running.
 :sb-doc

 ;; Do regression and other tests when building the system. You
 ;; might or might not want this if you're not a developer,
 ;; depending on how paranoid you are. You probably do want it if
 ;; you are a developer.
 :sb-test

 ;; Make more debugging information available (for debugging SBCL
 ;; itself). If you aren't hacking or troubleshooting SBCL itself,
 ;; you probably don't want this set.
 ;;
 ;; At least two varieties of debugging information are enabled by this
 ;; option:
 ;;   * SBCL is compiled with a higher level of OPTIMIZE DEBUG, so that
 ;;     the debugger can tell more about the state of the system.
 ;;   * Various code to print debugging messages, and similar debugging code,
 ;;     is compiled only when this feature is present.
 ;;
 ;; Note that the extra information recorded by the compiler at
 ;; this higher level of OPTIMIZE DEBUG includes the source location
 ;; forms. In order for the debugger to use this information, it has to
 ;; re-READ the source file. In an ordinary installation of SBCL, this
 ;; re-READing may not work very well, for either of two reasons:
 ;;   * The sources aren't present on the system in the same location that
 ;;     they were on the system where SBCL was compiled.
 ;;   * SBCL is using the standard readtable, without the added hackage
 ;;     which allows it to handle things like target features.
 ;; If you want to be able to use the extra debugging information,
 ;; therefore, be sure to keep the sources around, and run with the
 ;; readtable configured so that the system sources can be read.
 ; :sb-show

 ;; Build SBCL with the old CMU CL low level debugger, "ldb". If 
 ;; are aren't messing with CMU CL at a very low level (e.g. 
 ;; trying to diagnose GC problems, or trying to debug assembly
 ;; code for a port to a new CPU) you shouldn't need this.
 ; :sb-ldb

 ;; This isn't really a target Lisp feature at all, but controls
 ;; whether the build process produces an after-xc.core file. This
 ;; can be useful for shortening the edit/compile/debug cycle when
 ;; you modify SBCL's own source code, as in slam.sh. Otherwise
 ;; you don't need it.
 ; :sb-after-xc-core

 ;; Enable extra debugging output in the assem.lisp assembler/scheduler
 ;; code. (This is the feature which was called :DEBUG in the
 ;; original CMU CL code.)
 ; :sb-show-assem

 ;; Setting this makes SBCL more "fluid", i.e. more amenable to
 ;; modification at runtime, by suppressing various INLINE declarations,
 ;; compiler macro definitions, FREEZE-TYPE declarations; and by
 ;; suppressing various burning-our-ships-behind-us actions after
 ;; initialization is complete; and so forth. This tends to clobber the
 ;; performance of the system, so unless you have some special need for
 ;; this when hacking SBCL itself, you don't want this set.
 ; :sb-fluid

 ;; Enable code for collecting statistics on usage of various operations,
 ;; useful for performance tuning of the SBCL system itself. This code
 ;; is probably pretty stale (having not been tested since the fork from
 ;; base CMU CL) but might nonetheless be a useful starting point for
 ;; anyone who wants to collect such statistics in the future.
 ; :sb-dyncount

 ;; Peter Van Eynde's increase-bulletproofness code for CMU CL
 ;;
 ;; Some of the code which was #+high-security before the fork has now
 ;; been either made unconditional, deleted, or rewritten into
 ;; unrecognizability, but some remains. What remains is not maintained
 ;; or tested in current SBCL, but I haven't gone out of my way to
 ;; break it, either. 
 ;;
 ; :high-security
 ; :high-security-support

 ;; multiprocessing support
 ;;
 ;; This is not maintained or tested in current SBCL. I haven't gone out
 ;; of my way to break it, but since it's derived from an old version of 
 ;; CMU CL where multiprocessing was pretty shaky, it's likely to be very
 ;; flaky now.
 ;;   :MP enables multiprocessing
 ;;   :MP-I486 is used, only within the multiprocessing code, to control
 ;;            what seems to control processor-version-specific code. It's
 ;;            probably for 486 or later, i.e. could be set as long as
 ;;            you know you're not running on a 386, but it doesn't seem
 ;;            to be documented anywhere, so that's just a guess.
 ; :mp
 ; :mp-i486

 ;; This affects the definition of a lot of things in bignum.lisp. It
 ;; doesn't seem to be documented anywhere what systems it might apply
 ;; to. It doesn't seem to be needed for X86 systems anyway.
 ; :32x16-divide

 ;; This is probably true for some processor types, but not X86. It
 ;; affects a lot of floating point code.
 ; :negative-zero-is-not-zero

 ;; This is set in classic CMU CL, and presumably there it means
 ;; that the floating point arithmetic implementation
 ;; conforms to IEEE's standard. Here it definitely means that the
 ;; floating point arithmetic implementation conforms to IEEE's standard.
 ;; I (WHN 19990702) haven't tried to verify
 ;; that it does conform, but it should at least mostly conform (because
 ;; the underlying x86 hardware tries).
 :ieee-floating-point

 ;; CMU CL had, and we inherited, code to support 80-bit LONG-FLOAT on the x86
 ;; architecture. Nothing has been done to actively destroy the long float
 ;; support, but it hasn't been thoroughly maintained, and needs at least
 ;; some maintenance before it will work. (E.g. the LONG-FLOAT-only parts of
 ;; genesis are still implemented in terms of unportable CMU CL functions
 ;; which are not longer available at genesis time in SBCL.) A deeper
 ;; problem is SBCL's bootstrap process implicitly assumes that the
 ;; cross-compilation host will be able to make the same distinctions
 ;; between floating point types that it does. This assumption is
 ;; fundamentally sleazy, even though in practice it's unlikely to break down
 ;; w.r.t. distinguishing SINGLE-FLOAT from DOUBLE-FLOAT; it's much more
 ;; likely to break down w.r.t. distinguishing DOUBLE-FLOAT from LONG-FLOAT.
 ;; Still it's likely to be quite doable to get LONG-FLOAT support working
 ;; again, if anyone's sufficiently motivated.
 ; :long-float

 ;;
 ;; miscellaneous notes on other things which could have special significance
 ;; in the *FEATURES* list
 ;;

 ;; notes on the :NIL and :IGNORE features:
 ;;
 ;; #+NIL is used to comment out forms. Occasionally #+IGNORE is used
 ;; for this too. So don't use :NIL or :IGNORE as the names of features..

 ;; notes on :SB-XC and :SB-XC-HOST features (which aren't controlled by this
 ;; file, but are instead temporarily pushed onto *FEATURES* or
 ;; *TARGET-FEATURES* during some phases of cross-compilation):
 ;;
 ;; :SB-XC-HOST stands for "cross-compilation host" and is in *FEATURES*
 ;; during the first phase of cross-compilation bootstrapping, when the
 ;; host Lisp is being used to compile the cross-compiler.
 ;;
 ;; :SB-XC stands for "cross compiler", and is in *FEATURES* during the second
 ;; phase of cross-compilation bootstrapping, when the cross-compiler is
 ;; being used to create the first target Lisp.

 ;; notes on the :SB-ASSEMBLING feature (which isn't controlled by
 ;; this file):
 ;;
 ;; This is a flag for whether we're in the assembler. It's
 ;; temporarily pushed onto the *FEATURES* list in the setup for
 ;; the ASSEMBLE-FILE function. It would be a bad idea
 ;; to use it as a name for a permanent feature.

 ;; notes on local features (which are set automatically by the
 ;; configuration script, and should not be set here unless you
 ;; really, really know what you're doing):
 ;; 
 ;; machine architecture features:
 ;;   :x86
 ;;      any Intel 386 or better, or compatibles like the AMD K6 or K7
 ;;   :alpha
 ;;      DEC/Compaq Alpha CPU
 ;; (No other CPUs are supported by SBCL as of 0.6.12.15, but SPARC or
 ;; PowerPC support could be ported from CMU CL if anyone is
 ;; sufficiently motivated to do so, or if you're *really* motivated,
 ;; you could write a port from scratch for a new CPU architecture.)
 ;; (CMU CL also had a :pentium feature, which affected the definition
 ;; of some floating point vops. It was present but not enabled or 
 ;; documented in the CMU CL code that SBCL is derived from, and is
 ;; present but stale in SBCL as of 0.6.12.)
 ;;
 ;; properties derived from the machine architecture
 ;;   :control-stack-grows-downward-not-upward
 ;;     On the X86, the Lisp control stack grows downward. On the
 ;;     other supported CPU architectures as of sbcl-0.7.1.40, the
 ;;     system stack grows upward. 
 ;;   Note that there are other stack-related differences between the
 ;;   X86 port and the other ports. E.g. on the X86, the Lisp control
 ;;   stack coincides with the C stack, meaning that on the X86 there's
 ;;   stuff on the control stack that the Lisp-level debugger doesn't
 ;;   understand very well. As of sbcl-0.7.1.40 things like that are
 ;;   just parameterized by #!+X86, but it'd probably be better to
 ;;   use new flags like :CONTROL-STACK-CONTAINS-C-STACK.
 ;;
 ;; operating system features:
 ;;   :linux   = We're intended to run under some version of Linux.
 ;;   :bsd     = We're intended to run under some version of BSD Unix. (This
 ;;              is not exclusive with the features which indicate which
 ;;              particular version of BSD we're intended to run under.)
 ;;   :freebsd = We're intended to run under FreeBSD.
 ;;   :openbsd = We're intended to run under FreeBSD.
 ;; (No others are supported by SBCL as of 0.6.7, but :hpux or
 ;; :solaris support could be ported from CMU CL if anyone is
 ;; sufficiently motivated to do so, and it'd even be possible,
 ;; though harder, to port the system to Microsoft Windows.)
 )