Binary distributions built for Linux systems
Poplog is an open source, incrementally compiled software development environment for the programming languages POP-11, Common Lisp, Prolog, and Standard ML, originally created in 1981 at the University of Sussex. It was initially used for teaching and research in Artificial Intelligence and later marketed as a commercial package for software R&D. Despite being remarkably innovative, anticipating many major language development themes by several decades, organised development on Poplog ground to a halt in the late 1990s. Fortunately it was made open source by the University of Sussex and has since been maintained by enthusiasts.
Why the renewed interest in this venerable system? I reflected on this topic at ECOOP in 2019, where I gave a retrospective on Poplog and highlighted some of its features that have contemporary interest, such as the four supported REPL interpreters (plus foreign function interface), the unique and efficient language extensibility in non-homoiconic, human-friendly language, concatenative semantics, abstraction over assignment, generalised coroutines that include generators and fibres as special cases, dynamic localisation as an alternative to dependency injection, unrestricted closures in a fully imperative language and more. In fact it was remarkably ahead of its time and it remains a source of inspiration as well as being a very practical system. You can read the whole presentation here.
We aim to automate of the production and test of reliable, easy-to-use, simple installation methods for Poplog that deliver a well-organised but flexible installation.
This work is only possible thanks to Aaron Sloman's dedication in maintaining the FreePoplog resource over the years.