Lisp for OpenWRT

These instructions work for both LibreCMC and OpenWRT.

libreCMC is an embedded GNU/Linux distribution (without any proprietary code) of firmware for embedded devices, such as wireless routers. It began as a fork of OpenWRT. The difference between these two is that OpenWRT, like most GNU/Linux distributions, include non-free binary drivers (most often for wireless). However, it may unfortunately be hard to find a router that is supported by libreCMC, so my efforts have been mostly on packaging languages for OpenWRT (although the packages should work on libreCMC, I cannot guarantee that, since I do not own a compatible router).

libreCMC and OpenWRT already come with Lua, and it’s possible to include languages like Python and PHP. Some people may prefer to write their automation scripts in different languages, so I’ve tried to bring Lisp to the distribution. This page contains instructions, Makefiles, patches and anything else needed to get some Lisps on these devices.

The description of the packaged languages follows.

• TinyScheme maintained by Dimitrios Souflis, Kevin Cozens and Jonathan S. Shapiro is a lightweight Scheme interpreter that implements as large a subset of R5RS as was possible without getting very large and complicated. The package distributed here includes the TSX extension by Manuel Heras-Gilsanz, which provides support for operations with filesystem, sockets, date/time, and more. TinyScheme has the usual Lisp features (macros, homoiconicity and eval, first class functions, etc), and the TSX extension gives you:
  • Sockets
  • Filesystem access
  • Time functions
  • Access to environment variables
  • Execution of commands using /bin/sh Unfortunately, the souce code for TSX is not available from its author anymore (as far as I can see, the page is gone). But the last version I could get is this one. It’s small enough that a code review is actually easy.

  Tinyscheme has been in development since 1998.

• PicoLisp is a dialect of Lisp that is remarkably small and simple, and yet quite useful in practice. Besides the usual Lisp features (macros, homoiconicity and eval, first class functions, etc), PicoLisp also has these interesting features:
  • A database supporting transactions;
  • PicoLisp works as an application server framework (including an HTTP server);
  • An API for system access (date/time, filesystem, etc);
  • A logic programming engine (Pilog, which has the semantics of Prolog but the syntax of Lisp);
  • Object-orientation extensions;
  • Coroutines.

  PicoLisp has been in development since 2002.

The packaging was done by Jeronimo Pellegrini. Send problem reports to j_p *** aleph0.info (put the @ sign instead of the ***).

The tarballs listed below contain a Makefile that will download the sources from this site (I have changed them so they compile properly. The approximate size of each package, after installed on a qemu image, is listed.

• A text explaining how to compile the packages for libreCMC or OpenWRT
• Not necessary but you may be interested in this other text explaining how to run OpenWRT on qemu
• TinyScheme [ 60k ] : The tarball (1.41-openwrt5, 2019-03-09) for compiling TinyScheme. This Makefile will download a modified version of TinyScheme from this site (aleph0.info). The only changes are: (i) the use of -fPIC inside openwrt’s buildroot, (ii) don’t build the static lib; and (ii) the inclusion of TSX.
• PicoLisp [ 286k ] : The tarball (18.6-openwrt1, 2019-03-09) for compiling PicoLisp. The only patches applied are to the Makefile: (i) include a top-level Makefile, otherwise OpenWRT’s build framework won’t compile the package; (ii) use environment $(CC) instead of gcc, because the GCC from OpenWRT buildroot needs to be used (and not the host’s default GCC installation; (iii) build the HTTP gate We don’t build the HTTP gate anymore, because it uses ECC, and OpenWRT has it disabled in libopenssl.

I’d also like to package TSION – another extension for TinyScheme, by Alex Measday, which allows easy implementation of event-driven loops and TCP networking – but I had no time yet to work on that.

Failed attempts:

• Chibi Scheme is another nice Scheme implementation that could be packaged. Here’s the tarball

• Chicken Scheme, a great Scheme implementation. Although apparently large, it could fit in a router with extroot with its binaries stripped. Here’s the tarball