Awesome Common Lisp

A curated list of awesome Common Lisp libraries.

For awesome software, see lisp-lang.org's success stories and the awesome-cl-software list.

All libraries listed here are available from [Quicklisp][16] unless stated otherwise. The ones marked with a ⭐ are so widespread and solid that they became community standards. You can't be wrong with them. This is the case for Quicklisp, BordeauxThreads and such. Libraries denoted with a 👍 are the ones we like and want to promote here at the Awesome-cl list. They proved solid, they may solve a problem better than a community standard but they aren't as widespread, or not considered as stable. For example, we prefer Spinneret over Cl-Who.

Add something new! See the contributing section for adding something to the list.

This is released under the GNU Free Documentation License - its text is provided in the LICENSE file. This repository is also mirrored on NotABug - a fully-free (as in libre) alternative to Github. Preference is given to [free software][13] and sellers who aren't evil for physical resources.

Table of Contents

• Artificial Intelligence (AI, LLMs)
• Audio
• Build Systems
• Compilers, code generators
  • APL
  • C, C++
• Cryptography
• Cryptocurrencies
• Database
  • ORMs
  • Persistent object databases
  • Graph databases
  • Wrappers
  • Migration tools
  • To third parties
  • Tools
• Data Structures
• Docker images
• Foreign Function Interface, languages interop
  • C
  • Clojure
  • Erlang
  • Java
  • Objective-C
  • Python
  • .Net Core
  • Miscellaneous
• Game Development
• Graphics
• GUI
  • Mobile
• Implementations
• JSON
• YAML
• Language extensions
  • Pattern matching
  • Portability layers
  • Changing the syntax
  • CLOS extensions
  • Function extensions
  • Iteration
  • Lambda shorthands
  • Non-deterministic, logic programming
  • Reactive programming
  • Contract programming
  • Typing
  • Theorem provers
• Learning and Tutorials
  • Online
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Coding platforms
  • Web Development
  • Reference
  • Offline
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Other books
  • Community
• Library Manager
  • Interfaces to other package managers
• Machine Learning
• Natural Language Processing
• Network and Internet
  • HTTP clients
  • HTTP Servers
    • Hunchentoot plugins
    • Clack plugins
  • Web frameworks
    • Isomorphic web frameworks
  • Parsing html
  • Querying HTML/DOM, web scraping
  • HTML generators and templates
  • URI handling
  • Javascript
  • Deployment
  • Monitoring
  • Websockets
  • Web development utilities
    • Assets management
    • Browser tests
    • Form handling
    • User login and password management
    • Web project skeletons and generators
  • Others
    • Email
    • OpenAPI, OData, OpenRPC
    • Static site generators
    • Third-party APIs
• Numerical and Scientific
  • Matrix libraries
  • Statistics
  • Units
  • Utils
• Parallelism and Concurrency
  • Actors pattern
  • Event processing
  • Job processing
• Regular expressions and string parsing
• Scripting
  • Writing, running scripts
  • Command-line options parsers
  • Readline, ncurses and other graphical helpers
  • Shells, shells interfaces
  • System administration
  • Other scripting utilities
• Text Editor Resources
  • Emacs
  • Vim & Neovim
  • Eclipse
  • Lem
  • Atom, Pulsar
  • Sublime Text
  • VSCode
  • JetBrains
  • Geany (experimental)
  • Notebooks
  • REPLs
  • Online editors
  • Apps
• Text and binary parsers
• Text Processing
• Tools
• Unit Testing
• Utilities
  • Caching
  • Compression / decompression
  • Configuration
  • CSV
  • Date and time
  • Data validation
  • Developer utilities
  • Documentation builders
  • Files and directories
  • Git
  • i18n
  • Linting, code formatting
  • Literate programming
  • Logging
  • Macro helpers
  • Markdown
  • PDF
  • Plotting
  • Project skeletons
  • Security
  • System interface
  • XML
  • Other
• Contributing

Artificial Intelligence (AI, LLMs)

Around the OpenAI API:

• openai-openapi-client - semi-automatically generated Openapi client updated frequently from the official Openapi specification. AGPL-3.
  • available on Ultralisp.
• cl-completions - LLM completions.
  • makes it easy to create GPT functions in Common Lisp.
  • Ollama support.
• cl-embeddings - LLM embeddings.
• cl-chroma - the vecor DB interface.

demos: cl-rag-example and cl-chat, a LLM chat library and web UI.

Educational:

• PAIP-lisp - Lisp code for the textbook "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming".
• AIMA-lisp - Common Lisp implementation of algorithms from Russell and Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach".

Audio

Music composition:

• OM7 - a new implementation of the OpenMusic visual programming and computer-aided composition environment including a number of improvements on graphical interface, computational mode, and connection to external software libraries. [GPL3][2].
  • an extension: rq - a library for rhythm transcription in OpenMusic (version 6.10 and later). demo video. [GPL3][2].
• Incudine - Music/DSP programming environment for Common Lisp. Useful to design software synthesizers or sound plugins from scratch. It is also a compositional tool that allows to produce high quality sounds controllable at the sample level, defining and redefining the digital signal processors and the musical structures on-the-fly.
• CLM - Common Lisp Music is a music synthesis and signal processing package in the Music V family. It provides much the same functionality as Stk, Csound, SuperCollider, PD, CMix, cmusic, and Arctic — a collection of functions that create and manipulate sounds, aimed primarily at composers (in CLM's case anyway).
  • common-tones - a fork of CLM5 with modern Lisp (ASDF, cffi…). [BSD_3Clause][15].
• Slippery Chicken - Algorithmic composition library which outputs Midi, Common Music Notation, pdf-score via Lilypond and sound via Common Lisp Music. [GPL3][2].
  • with documentation: https://michael-edwards.org/sc/
• Common Music - the repository of an ancient version of Common Music (version 2.12.0), the presumably last version which ran on Common Lisp dating from around 2007-09, before work on Common Music shifted to (scheme-based) cm3.
  • note: old project but working.
  • cm-incudine - extends Common Music 2 with realtime capabilities. GPL2.
• cl-patterns - a system for composing music via Lisp code, heavily inspired by SuperCollider’s patterns system, with aims to implement much of it, but in a more robust, expressive, consistent, reflective, and lispy way. Audio output through SuperCollider, with preliminary support for Incudine, and MIDI through ALSA.
• Music - A framework for musical expression in Lisp with a focus on music theory (built from scratch, unrelated to Common Music).

Decoders, sound processing:

• Harmony - A real-time sound processing and playback system. [zlib][33].
  • "provides you with audio processing tools as well as an audio server to play back music, sfx, and so forth."
  • using cl-mixed for the mixing and sound processing library.
• easy-audio - a collection of audio decoders and metadata readers.

others:

• scheduler - The time based musical event scheduler for Common Lisp. [Apache2.0][89].
• Common Music Notation - Common Music Notation (CMN) provides a package of functions to hierarchically describe a musical score. Public domain.
• osc - an implementation of the Open Sound Protocol. [LGPL2.1][11].

bindings and clients to other software and libraries:

• cl-mpg123, cl-opus (OGG/Opus), cl-vorbis (OGG/Vorbis), cl-SoLoud, cl-out123 (libout123), cl-flac
• csound - A sound and music computing system. Includes CFFI and FFI interfaces for Common Lisp.
• cl-collider - A SuperCollider client for CommonLisp. With a tutorial and live coding demos. Public domain.
• cl-openal - bindings for the OpenAL audio library. Public domain.

and more audio software targetting musicians on awesome-cl-software#audio (Opus Modus, OpenMusic…).

Build Systems

• ⭐ASDF - Another System Definition Facility; a build system for Common Lisp. [Expat][14]. Quicklisp (see library manager) uses ASDF under the hood.
  • known ASDF extensions, such as asdf-system-connections, that lets you specify systems that are automatically loaded when two other systems are loaded, to connect them.
• asdf-linguist - Extensions for ASDF. [Expat][14].
• asdf-viz - a tool to visualize the library dependencies of ASDF systems, the call graph of a function and the class inheritances. [LLGPL][8].

See also:

• modularize - A modularization framework for Common Lisp. [zlib][33].
  • provides a common interface to segregate major application components.
  • for instance, by adding module definition options you can introduce mechanisms to tie modules together in functionality, hook into each other and so on.
  • acts as a wrapper around defpackage and integrates into ASDF.

Compilers, code