KLklibertp·Apr 27, 2025
You're not the first one to think so: https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL
I'm unsure how complete it is, but it seems to cover much of the standard.
In Show HN: A Common Lisp implementation in development, supports ASDFrobert-strandh
SICL
TeX2014–2025
robert-strandh / SICL
SICL
A fresh implementation of Common Lisp
19Distinct people
23Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.2KGitHub stars
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What it is
A fresh implementation of Common Lisp
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This week on Hacker News
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HN mentions by year23 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-09-08 14:17:06 UTC to 2025-04-27 21:19:55 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 4 | 2 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
23 sourcesSICL: A fresh implementation of Common Lisp
17 points · Open discussionEverybody forgets about SICL. It's one of the few new CL implementations that's not proprietary or copyleft.
https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL
In These years in Common Lisp: 2023-2024 in reviewThis is a very approachable paper from 1990 on one way to do it with a C kernel bootstrapping to Common Lisp: https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/kcl/paper... Kyoto Common Lisp (KCL) is the ancestor of today's Embeddable Common Lisp (ECL).
SICL is probably the best modern version of CL written in CL from a design standpoint, even if it's not taking over SBCL's role anytime soon: https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL It uses some fancy bootstrapping to have the whole language available early, e.g. their definition of class 'symbol is:
(defclass symbol (t)
((%name :reader symbol-name)
(%package :reader symbol-package))
(:metaclass built-in-class))
vs SBCL:
(define-primitive-object
(symbol :lowtag other-pointer-lowtag
:widetag symbol-header-widetag
:alloc-tra
Read the rest
ns %make-symbol
:type symbol)
...
(name :ref-trans symbol-name :init :arg)
(package :ref-trans symbol-package
:set-trans %set-symbol-package
:init :null)
...)
(That's from one of the papers from the 2019 European Lisp Symposium: https://www.european-lisp-symposium.org/2019/index.html Scroll down to the bottom for proceedings with all the papers in the pdf. Going through the ELS archives and checking out papers and their references can be useful for learning more about this stuff too.)
Lisp from Nothing and Lisp System Implementation from [1].
There are quite a few open source Lisp implementations in addition to SBCL that you can peruse [2] (follow links to CL's supported by Quicklisp). If you are targeting a specific platform (JVM or embedded), then ABCL/ECL; see Clasp for using LLVM.
To reuse modules for writing your own lisp, see SICL [3]
[1] http://t3x.org
[2] https://www.quicklisp.org/beta/
[3] https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL
In Ask HN: Guide for Implementing Common LispThat's pretty much the objective of SICL, which is "intentionally divided into many implementation-independent modules that are written in a totally or near-totally portable way, so as to allow other implementations to incorporate these modules from SICL, rather than having to maintain their own, perhaps implementation-specific versions".
https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL
In An implementation of Common Lisp targeting LuaGladly!
https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL (which I wrote a decent chunk of the compiler backend of.)
In Strong static typing, a hill I'm willing to die onThis is a project that has been in development for years now and also makes use of the Cleavir compiler framework (https://github.com/s-expressionists/Cleavir), which is being developed as part of another new Common Lisp implementation called SICL (https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL).
Congrats to the CLASP devs, this is a huge accomplishment and it's really exciting to see a new CL implementation get a 1.0 release.
In Clasp reaches 1.0 (Common Lisp with C++ Interop)> 4. Then I picked an experimental, developing compiler "Cleavir" written by Robert Strandh and bootstrap that with my Common Lisp compiler.
I was wondering if this was some new twist on clasp that I was unaware of - but then discovered that I know that project as SICL (not cleavir).
Since you had a primitive cl compiler (from 2) - 4 added a runtime/advanced cl compiler?
https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL
In Learning Almost Nothing About LLVMSICL: A New Common Lisp Implementation
147 points · Open discussionSICL – A new Common Lisp implementation
19 points · Open discussionSICL: A fresh implementation of Common Lisp
2 points · Open discussionSICL: A fresh implementation of Common Lisp
3 points · Open discussion> What probably Lisp trails in is type inference
SBCL type inference is actually getting better and better over time, giving you pretty effective gradual typing. Additionally, a Common Lisp implementation called SICL is in the works, with an advanced compiler and type inference engine.
https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL/
In Getting Started with Lisp (2019)Showing the 15 most recent of 23 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.