Slima not connected

[pdiwadkar]

Hello,
I am trying to setup Pulsar with SBCL.
OS- Windows 11
Downloaded Pulsar, SBCL and SLIME source code and followed all the instructions mentioned. When i start Pulsar, i see the message in left corner- SLIMA not connected. Do i also need to install SLIME? I don't have emacs.
Directory- D:\CommonLisp
Slime- D:\CommonLisp\slime-2.31
SBCL- D:\CommonLisp\sbcl.exe

[neil-lindquist]

Usually the first time you run the swank server, sbcl has to compile some things. So, usually it takes a little longer. I would first suggest waiting maybe 10 seconds then running Slime: Connect. If it still doesn't connect, you can run Window: Toggle Dev Tools to see Electron's console, which should have any error messages if the Swank server failed to start.

If those steps don't fix it/make the fix obvious, I can look at what's printed to your console.

[pdiwadkar]

Thanks a lot. I am entirely new to Emacs and related software. May i know where to run Slime: Connect command? also where can i get more details on running Swank server?

[neil-lindquist]

Pulsar has what's called the Command Palette. If you press ctrl-shift-p, a little dialog pops up that you can type commands in. It has a fuzzy-search, so if you type "Connect" usually "Slime: Connect" pops up.
The connect command should be somewhere in the drop-down menus too, but I find the command palette easier.

As for running the Swank server, SLIMA is supposed to be able to launch it for normal usage. You just need to set the path to the SLIME code in SLIMA's settings.
To run it manually (or with the "custom swank command" setting), there should be a start-swank.lisp file in your SLIME install. There's some examples in the SLIMA wiki.

I don't really remember most of the specifics of Swank anymore. I'd start by look at the start-swank.lisp file. And lib/swank-starter.coffee contains SLIMA's logic for starting the swank server. The SLIME docs might have information on the Swank server too.

[efraimmgon]

i'm getting this message too, on mac m1

followed the instructions in the readme and javascript console tells me everything should be working, but, as you can see, it still doesn't work.

[efraimmgon]

reopening pulsar i'm now getting :invalid-rpc from the swank-client

[neil-lindquist]

It looks like the Swank protocol changed in 2.31. A quick test suggests that SLIMA works with 2.30. I know SLIMA works well with 2.24 since that's the version that I did a fair bit of development work with.

Swank-client is reverse engineered from SLIME, so I'll have to find some time to figure out what changed.