EMACS with Slime on Chromebook

Because of a felt-insufficiency of nerdness in my life, I decided it was high time I get set up to use slime in EMACS on a Chromebook. I have been an EMACS user on Windows, using it for my first experience of Common Lisp development. I now use LispWorks on my Windows machine but if there was a way to do Common Lisp on my Chromebook I thought I would hazard some of my time to learn how to go about it.

First, get Linux on your Chromebook. For newer systems, this is as simple as turning on Linux Beta in the user settings of your Chromebook. I don't know how well this works on older Chromebooks, but I understand there are ways.

With Linux enabled or installed as required, go to the terminal (settings key, type linux or terminal and you should see it) and type sudo apt-get install emacs25. I had to run an update to apt-get for this to work properly (sudo apt-get update). Then I redid the emacs25 install (same command line) and it caught up the parts it missed the first time. 

Similarly, you can install a version of Common Lisp. I chose Steel Bank Common Lisp (sbcl). The command line for that is (perhaps predictably) sudo apt-get install sbcl.

Quicklisp is next. I downloaded it from here. I moved it into my Linux files because it seemed like a good idea off hand, though I'm not sure that it is strictly necessary. Before trying to load this, I checked out the (rather simple) file structure on my Linux system from the terminal perspective. Use the ls command to see the files in the current directory and the cd command to change directory (I'm not a real Linux user, maybe you're not either). Next, I started sbcl by typing it at the command line. This results in bringing you to a command line version of sbcl where you can type Common Lisp commands. We use this to load Quicklisp. I issue the following, pressing enter after each line:

    (load "quicklisp.lisp")

    (quicklisp-quickstart:install)

    (ql:add-to-init-file)

    (ql:quickload "quicklisp-slime-helper")

    (quit)

Now, you need some code added to the the init file, but I didn't see such a file and wasn't sure where to put it. Fortunately, there's a way for EMACS to help you with that. Go into EMACS and type CTRL+x CTRL+f, it will assume you want the home directory and lead you with "~/", and so you add to that emacs.d/init.el and press enter. Or, in EMACSese, that's C-x C-f ~/emacs.d/init.el RET. HT to the Wiki. This will create and open the file for you. 

The code you will want to put in this file is suggested at the end of installing the quicklisp-slime-helper and it is this:

    (load (expand-file-name "~/quicklisp/slime-helper.el"))

      (setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl")

Paste the code into the file you just opened. Now, be prepared for a "wha?" moment. The shortcut sequence for pasting into EMACS is CTRL+y. Or, C-y as the EMACS users like to say. This will not be your last such moment, but carry on.

You are now prepared to start writing and executing Common Lisp code in EMACS. In the below, C- means press and hold CTRL and M- means press and hold ALT. I do the following sequence as a standard way to get started:

    C-x 3 (gets you set with vertical division--left and right panes. one for code file and one for REPL)

    M-x slime RET (starts the REPL)

Here is the classic video tutorial (HT Baggers) of most of these steps done for Windows that also gives a bit of a flavor of what it is like to use Slime in EMACS for Common Lisp development: Installing Common Lisp, Emacs, Slime & Quicklisp.