How to setup a webserver in common lisp?

Question

Several months ago, I was inspired by the magnificent book ANSI Common Lisp written by Paul Graham, and the statement that Lisp could be used as a secret weapon in your web development, published by the same author on his blog. Wow, that is amazing. That is something that I have been looking for long time. The author really developed a successful web applcation and sold it to Yahoo.

With those encouraging images, I determined to spend some time (1 year or 2 year, who knows) on learning Common Lisp. Maybe someday I will development my web application and turn into a great Lisp expert. In fact, this is the second time for me to get to study Lisp. The first time was a couple of years ago when I was fascinated by the famous book SICP but found later Scheme was so unbelievably immature for real life application.

After reading some chapters of ANSI Common Lisp, I was pretty sure that is a great book full of detailed exploration of Common Lisp. Then I began to set up a web server in Common Lisp. After all, this should be the best way if you want to learn something. Demonstrations are always better than definations.

As suggested by the book Practical Common Lisp (by the way, this is also a great book), I chose to install AllegroServe on some Common Lisp implementation. Then, from somewhere else, I learned that Hunchentoot seems to be better than AllegroServe. (I don't remember where and whom this word is from. So don't argue with me.)

Ironically, you know what, I never could installed the two packages on any Common Lisp implementation. More annoyingly, I even don't know why. The machine always spit up a lot of jargon and lead me into a chaos. I've tried searching the internet and have not found anything.

Could anybody who has successfully installed these packages in Linux tell me how you did it? Have you run into any trouble? How did you figured out what is wrong and fixed it? The more detailed, the more helpful.

Answer 1

Paul Graham has, for starters :-)

I too have found Common Lisp a lot of work to get past step one. The environment is terrible when you're just getting started, there's not a clear One True Path to get to the point where you can bang in some code and see some results (like there is with Python, for example). Like you, I wasted a lot of time jumping from one implementation to another. So my advice is:

I suggest you just pick one and ignore all other advice until you get it going.

If you're not in the mood, just get Apache and write some PHP :-)

Answer 2

Have you tried these instructions?

I already had a working SBCL installation so I've only followed the second half of the instructions. It sets up a very minimal web app, so it lets you see just how to structure your own web app.

These instructions might not be quite what you're looking for - they're for setting up a web server (on Ubuntu) with remote interaction with emacs/SLIME, but I guess "remote interaction" could just as well mean localhost.