Define a Lisp implementation to run inside a (Guix) container

[Ambrevar]

I can start sbcl in a container with

guix environment --container --ad-hoc sbcl -- sbcl

But if I set the above as a sly-lisp-implementations, it tries connecting forever, to no avail.

What works however is to start the containerized Lisp as above in a separate shell, from there start a Slynk server with

(slynk:create-server :port 4006)

Now from Emacs I can run sly-connect and it successfully connects to the containerized Lisp.

Any clue how to get sly to use a (Guix)-containerized Lisp directly?

[Ambrevar]

Answering my own question: the trick is to share the location of the SLY port file, which is where (sly-slynk-port-file) expands to, that is, /tmp on my machine.

This implementation works (bonus: extensions included):

'("guix" "shell" "--container" "--network"
  "--expose=/gnu/store"
  "--share=/tmp"
  "sbcl" "sbcl-slynk"

  "emacs-sly"
  "emacs-sly-asdf"
  "emacs-sly-macrostep"
  "emacs-sly-named-readtables"
  "emacs-sly-stepper"
  "--" "sbcl")

@joaotavora Maybe document this somewhere?

[joaotavora]

I don't fully understand the question, but I am definitely happy you found the answer.

Maybe document this somewhere?

Maybe in your blog :-) Else make a pull request to Sly's doc. But then try to be as generic as possible, i.e. does this also work with Docker containers?

[Ambrevar]

I suppose it does.

What was blocking me was that I didn't know the existence of sly-slynk-port-file and that I had to share this file.

The solution is thus generic to any container system that supports sharing files... So all of them!