tiny-clos


tinyclos can be run in any Debian or Ubu but much of the web tutorials you can google are not working. BIG FAIL !

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Developed at Xerox Parc by Gregor Kiczales.

Tiny CLOS, like its bigger CLOS brother has a meta-object-protocol.

The original code is available here: ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/mops/tiny/ (mirror: https://github.com/kstephens/tinyclos )

From ftp://ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/mops/tiny/tiny-announce.text

This message will be of interest to: (i) People who are interested in metaobject protocols, particularly metaobject protocols for Lisp-based object-oriented languages; and (ii) people who are interested in Lisp- based object-oriented languages like CLOS and Dylan. In this message, we announce the public availability of the Scheme implementation of a `kernelized' CLOS, with a metaobject protocol. (If you are interested only in OO languages, and not metaobject protocols, you can skip the third, fourth and fifth paragraphs of this message.)

One stumbling block for people interested in playing with the metaobject protocol (MOP) ideas has been the relative complexity of working in Common Lisp. This has been a particular obstacle for undergraduates and others who normally work in Scheme (or a very reduced Common Lisp). To try and address this, we have designed and implemented a Scheme embedding of a core subset of CLOS, with a corresponding core MOP.

Since our primary goal is pedagogical in nature, we have been able to produce an extremely lean language, MOP and implementation. The implementation is even simpler than the simple CLOS found in `The Art of the Metaobject Protocol,' weighing in at around 850 lines of code, including (some) comments and documentation.

By making the new language and MOP be the core of CLOS and the CLOS MOP, rather than some completely new language, our goal was to make possible for people to work with existing written materials -- primarily `The Art of the Metaobject Protocol' (AMOP) -- when playing with this system. (It should also be possible for people working with Tiny CLOS to get value from reading papers about others MOPs, such as ABLC/R, 3KRS and others.) A side benefit of this approach is that Tiny CLOS is close to a core of Dylan, so people interested in that language may find value in playing with Tiny CLOS as well.)

The MOP in Tiny CLOS is very simple -- 8 introspective procedures and 9 intercessory generics -- but it retains much of the power of both of the MOPs found in AMOP. Even though the Tiny CLOS implementation itself isn't optimized, this MOP is amenable to optimization, using techniques like those mentioned in AMOP. In fact, the slot access protocol used in this MOP is such that it should be possible to get better performance than is possible with the CLOS MOP.

While it isn't our primary goal, Tiny CLOS can also be used by those who are simply intereted in CLOS/Dylan style OO languages. That is, you can play with the base language without even thinking about the MOP. A great deal has already been said and written about how to learn, think about and teach OOP and CLOS-like languages, so we won't say any more about that. But, it is important to point out a significant difference between Tiny CLOS and CLOS/Dylan. In Tiny CLOS, slot names are not required to be symbols, they can be any Scheme datum (object). (They are compared using eq?.) This means that one can use the lexical scoping mechanisms of Scheme to achieve a greater degree of encapsulation than is possible in CLOS. For more on this, see the second and third examples in the examples file.

Accompanying Tiny CLOS is a file of examples, that show how the base language works, and how to use the MOP to do several common extensions. Other things people might want to write are: before and after methods, slot filling initargs, beta-like languages, singleton methods etc.

To make distribution simple, Tiny CLOS is available by anonymous ftp from parcftp.xerox.com:/pub/mops. There are five files of interest:

  
 tiny-annouce.text  This message.
 support.scm        Just a bunch of useful stuff.
                    (All implementation specific mods (are supposed
                    to) go in here.)
 tiny-clos.scm      The main program.
 tiny-examples.scm  A few little examples of using this language
                    and this MOP.
 tiny-rpp.text      The reflective processor program for this
                    MOP.  This file was generated, by hand, from
                    tiny-clos.scm by removing all the code that
                    deals with bootstrapping or grounding out
                    the tower.  That is, this is the code/protocol
                    that you should `think of' as running at the
                    next level, when ignoring issues of circularity.

MIT Scheme 11.74 is the only Scheme we have access to, so that is the only Scheme in which we have run this stuff. But, it should run with only minor mods in other Schemes as well. (Please send us those mods so they can be included in the sources!)

This language, this MOP, and this implementation should not be treated as any sort of finished product. This whole thing was cranked out relatively quickly, in response to an immediate need for simplified Scheme embeddings of this stuff. We are very interested in any suggestions or improvements you might have or make. So, please send them in!

(It is also worth knowing that this is the first Scheme program I have written in 10 years, so I'm willing to believe I have a lot to learn about good Scheme style. Rather than just snickering, please let me know about stupid things this code does in that regard.)

One other note. You will notice that these files have a copyright notice on them, as is the fashion these days. It isn't copyleft, it is somewhat more liberal than that. If you have any questions about it, send us mail.

Finally, please let us know if you decide to play with this stuff, and if you want to be on the mops@parc.xerox.com mailing list. (Note, please don't use this mailing list for adminstrative stuff. It is for technical questions and discussions. For administrative stuff, send mail to Gregor@parc.xerox.com.)


category-software

category-object-oriented