How to debug LISP compiler errors in LispBox?

Question

I have installed LispBox on Windows and it's running great. I do however have some trouble with debugging code : when I try and compile code and it contains an error such as a syntax error, the error message output (printed below) is not very useful.

Serious errors encountered during compilation of

"d:/Jervis/Documents/Programming/LISP/hw1.lisp"
   [Condition of type SIMPLE-ERROR]
  0: (CCL::%COMPILE-FILE "d:/Jervis/Documents/Programming/LISP/hw1.lisp" "d:/Jervis/Documents/Programming/LISP/hw1.wx64fsl" T NIL T T NIL T :DEFER NIL #<BACKEND WIN64 #x21001C6FCD> :DEFAULT NIL 0)
  1: (COMPILE-FILE #P"d:/Jervis/Documents/Programming/LISP/hw1.lisp" :OUTPUT-FILE #P"d:/Jervis/Documents/Programming/LISP/hw1.wx64fsl" :VERBOSE T :PRINT NIL :LOAD NIL :FEATURES NIL :TARGET :WIN64 :SAVE-LOC..
  2: (SWANK-BACKEND:CALL-WITH-COMPILATION-HOOKS #<CCL:COMPILED-LEXICAL-CLOSURE (:INTERNAL SWANK-BACKEND:SWANK-COMPILE-FILE) #x2100C2730F>)
  3: ((:INTERNAL SWANK:COMPILE-FILE-FOR-EMACS))

• Does anyone know how to get the line number of the code that is causing the compilation errors?

I have tried to follow the advice here of opening the Compiler Input buffer but that did not work. (The buffer was unavailable, and thus couldn't be opened).

Any Ideas?

Answer 1

A clarification first: the *Compiler Input* buffer you mention has nothing to do with Common Lisp and Slime, it is about errors that Emacs encountered when compiling Emacs Lisp (its internal lisp, quite different from CL).

As for your problem (determining a file name/line number to narrow down the problem): when I enter a broken piece of code in a file (say test.lisp):

(defun fact (n)
  (if (= 0 n)
  1
  !(* n (facto (1- n)))))

, then try to send it to CCL via Slime by pressing C-c C-k in the test.lisp buffer, I get an error and a list of restarts (below the list of restarts there's also a backtrace similar to what you got). Select restart 0 by pressing 0, then 'n' to not load the broken compiled file into CCL. The buffer with the error should be replaced with a buffer named *slime-compilation*, which in my case contains:

cd d:/tmp/lispbox-0.7/
2 compiler notes:

test.lisp:2:5:
  warning: Extra arguments in (IF (= 0 N) 1 ! (* N (FACTO (1- N)))) don't match lambda list (CCL::TEST CCL:TRUE &OPTIONAL CCL:FALSE).
  style-warning: Unused lexical variable N

Compilation failed.

, which looks like it's what you wanted.

My hand-installed Linux CL setup doesn't need selecting the 0 restart and there's also a slime setting to avoid the 'load fasl file anyway (y/n)' prompt, so the experience can get better with some customization.