Documentation for 1.0 release

The documentation on the website is from the 0.9.1 release and may be incorrect in some details. The mailing list since 2008 and this FAQ should supersede anything in the documentation.

clbuild compatability

Elephant does not work properly under the default clbuild configuration due to it's UFFI (not available through clbuild) dependency. We have made attempts to port Berkeley DB to CFFI (available through clbuild) but without success; there are subtle issues that lead to obscure bugs and the original FFI developer who wrote that code left the project in 2003 or 2004 and no one else has yet had the time and expertise to resolve them. The workaround (thanks to Sebastian Tennant) is:

• Edit wnpp-projects so that elephant-1.0 is pulled from darcs. Simply add '-1.0' to elephant's existing entry in wnpp-projects.
• Install UFFI (available from http://uffi.b9.com/download.html) and ensure that the uffi.asd file included in the download is found by ASDF before CFFI's uffi.asd, i.e., ensure that the systems directory containing the 'real' uffi.asd comes before clbuild's systems directory in asdf:*central-registry*.

Library and Lisp Dependencies

The most common active configurations of the 1.0 release branch is on SBCL/Linux/Postmodern+BDB and ClozureCL/MacOS/BDB. Elephant is known to work on these platforms when properly configured.

A patched version of Berkeley DB 4.7 is recommended (see below).

64-bit Lisp and Berkeley DB

If you are running a 64-bit lisp, Berkeley DB will need to be built accordingly. Package managers (e.g., MacPorts or Debian's APT) tend to build/ship 32-bit versions of Berkeley DB, in which case building a 64-bit version from source is the appropriate solution:

• Get Berkeley DB 4.7 from here and apply the patches. (If either of the above links don't work, navigate from the Berkeley DB index page).
• Unpack into /usr/local/src (or wherever). Build documentation can then be found locally as well as online.
• $ cd db-4.7.25/build_unix
• $ CCFLAGS="-arch x86_64" LDFLAGS="-arch x86_64" ../dist/configure (Thanks to Mathew Emerson for the magic flags).
• $ sudo make install
• Finally, don't forget to create the elephant configuration file my-config.sexp so that it refers to "4.7" and points to the appropriate paths.