Prerequisites - corigne/swank.nvim GitHub Wiki

Prerequisites

Everything you need to install before using swank.nvim.

Neovim

Minimum: Neovim 0.10
Recommended: Neovim 0.13+ (used for development and CI)

swank.nvim uses vim.uv (libuv bindings), vim.api.nvim_open_win with the relative = "editor" field, and vim.diagnostic.set. All of these are available in 0.10; some behaviour is improved in 0.13.

This plugin is pure Lua; no Vimscript compatibility layer is needed.

Quick start (autostart — recommended)

The default configuration automatically launches your CL implementation and connects to Swank when you open a .lisp file. You don't need to write any startup scripts or start a server manually.

All you need is a supported CL implementation and Quicklisp.

Common Lisp implementation

Implementation Support Notes
SBCL ✅ Primary Recommended. Fastest, best Swank coverage.
CCL (Clozure CL) ✅ Should work Swank well-supported, slightly less tested
ECL ⚠️ Partial Embeddable; some Swank contribs limited
ABCL ⚠️ Partial JVM-based; Swank works but can be slow to start
CLISP ❌ Not recommended Swank support is minimal; REPL only
Allegro CL 🔲 Untested Commercial; Swank support exists in theory

Installing SBCL

Linux (apt):

sudo apt install sbcl

Linux (pacman):

sudo pacman -S sbcl

macOS:

brew install sbcl

From source / prebuilt binaries: https://www.sbcl.org/getting.html

To use a different implementation, set autostart.implementation in your config:

require("swank").setup({
  autostart = { implementation = "ccl" },  -- or "ecl", "abcl", "/usr/local/bin/sbcl", etc.
})

Quicklisp

Quicklisp is the standard CL package manager. Install it once and swank.nvim will use it automatically to load Swank.

One-time setup

curl -O https://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp \
     --eval '(quicklisp-quickstart:install)' \
     --eval '(ql:add-to-init-file)' \
     --quit

This installs Quicklisp to ~/quicklisp/ and adds an auto-load snippet to ~/.sbclrc so it's available in every SBCL session.

No Quicklisp? SBCL bundles a copy of Swank via ASDF. swank.nvim will automatically fall back to (require :swank) if Quicklisp is not found. Note: the bundled Swank may be older and some contribs may not load.

ASDF

ASDF is the de-facto build system for CL.

  • SBCL, CCL, ECL, ABCL: bundled — no separate install needed
  • Required for the swank-asdf contrib, which enables project-aware compilation (:compile-and-load-file on .asd systems)

Advanced: connecting to an existing server

If you want to manage the Swank server yourself (remote machines, custom setups, or autostart.enabled = false), start it from your CL image:

(ql:quickload "swank" :silent t)
(swank:create-server :port 4005 :dont-close t)

Then connect from Neovim with <Leader>lc.

Port 4005 is the default for external servers. If you use autostart, the plugin starts Swank on an ephemeral port (:port 0) and connects automatically. No port configuration is needed.

Summary checklist

  • Neovim 0.10+
  • SBCL (or another supported implementation) on $PATH
  • Quicklisp installed at ~/quicklisp/ (or bundled Swank available via ASDF)
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