start-ide

Arguments: nil

The entry function to start the IDE. Thus, to start the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) in a Lisp without the IDE, it should be sufficient to do:

(require :ide) 
(ide:start-ide)

If the IDE is already running (or is starting up), then start-ide simply returns nil. Otherwise, start-ide creates a new "IDE GUI" process and returns it right away. The IDE GUI process proceeds to start up the IDE, and then sets *ide-is-running* to t when startup is finished. Therefore, if the caller of start-ide needs to know when the IDE is ready to use, it should wait until *ide-is-running* is true, since this is generally some time after start-ide returns.

See About IDE startup in cgide.htm, where the startup procedure is described.

Note about starting the IDE in Allegro CL Express Edition on Linux: if you wish to use the IDE on Linux in the Express Edition, you must start the executables/images allegro or allegro-ansi. Trying to load the IDE and then calling start-ide does not work. See Running the IDE in Allegro CL 8.0 Express on Linux in installation.htm.

In releases prior to 7.0, the symbol naming this operator was in the common-graphics package.

Copyright (c) 1998-2008, Franz Inc. Oakland, CA., USA. All rights reserved.
Documentation for Allegro CL version 8.0. This page was not revised from the 7.0 page.
Created 2005.12.9.