Last week, I did a release, I guess, of cl-grip which is a logging library that I wrote after reflecting on common lisp logging earlier. I wanted to write up some notes about it that aren’t covered in the read me, and also talk a little bit4 about what else I’m working on.

cl-grip

This is a really fun and useful project and it was really the right size for a project for me to really get into, and practice a bunch of different areas (packages! threads! testing!) and I think it’s useful to boot. The read me is pretty comprehensive, but I thought I’d collect some additional color here:

Really at it’s core cl-grip isn’t a logging library, it’s just a collection of interfaces that make it easy to write logging and messaging tools, which is a really cool basis for an idea, (I’ve been working on and with a similar system in Go for years.)

As result, there’s interfaces and plumbing for doing most logging related things, but no actual implementations. I was very excited to leave out the “log rotation handling feature,” which feels like an anachronism at this point, though it’d be easy enough to add that kind of handler in if needed. Although I’m going to let it stew for a little while, I’m excited to expand upon it in the future:

  • additional message types, including capturing stack frames for debugging, or system information for monitoring.
  • being able to connect and send messages directly to likely targets, including systemd’s journal and splunk collectors.
  • a collection of more absurd output targets to cover “alerting” type workloads, like desktop notifications, SUMP, and Slack targets.

I’m also excited to see if other people are interested in using it. I’ve submitted it to Quicklisp and Ultralisp, so give it a whirl!

See the cl-grip repo on github.

Eggqulibrium

At the behest of a friend I’ve been working on an “egg equilibrium” solver, the idea being to provide a tool that can given a bunch of recipes that use partial eggs (yolks and whites) can provide optimal solutions that use a fixed set of eggs.

So far I’ve implemented some prototypes that given a number of egg parts, attempt collects recipes until there are no partial eggs in use, so that there are no leftovers. I’ve also implemented the “if I have these partial eggs, what can I make to use them all.” I’ve also implemented a rudimentary CLI interface (that was a trip!) and a really simple interface to recipe data (both parsing from a CSV format and an in memory format that makes solving the equilibrium problem easier.)

I’m using it as an opportunity to learn different things, and find a way to learn more about things I’ve not yet touched in lisp (or anywhere really,) so I’m thinking about:

  • building a web-based interface using some combination of caveman, parenscript, and related tools. This could include features like “user submitted databases,” as well as links to the sources the recpies, in addition to the basic “web forms, APIs, and table rendering.”
  • storing the data in a database (probably SQLite, mostly) both to support persistence and other more advanced features, but also because I’ve not done database things from Lisp at all.

See the eggquilibrium repo on github it’s still pretty rough, but perhaps it’ll be interesting!'

Other Projects

  • Writing more! I’m trying to be less obsessive about blogging, as I think it’s useful (and perhaps interesting for you all too.) I’ve been writing a bunch and not posting very much of it. My goal is to mix sort of grandiose musing on technology and engineering, with discussions of Lisp, Emacs, and programming projects.
  • Working on producing texinfo output from cl-docutils! I’ve been toying around with the idea of writing a publication system targeted at producing books--long-form non-fiction, collections of essays, and fiction--rather than the blogs or technical resources that most such tools are focused on. This is sort of part 0 of this process.
  • Hacking on some Common Lisp projects, I’m particularly interested in the Nyxt and StumpWM.