jart/sectorlisp
Bootstrapping LISP in a Boot Sector observed · 2026-08-28
Health v2 · maintenance only
71/100
- Activity 87
- Release rhythm 35
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_releases
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 2137
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 81
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
1520 stars · 75 forks observed · 2026-08-28
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded
SectorLISP is a 512-byte LISP implementation that fits in a boot sector and boots John McCarthy's meta-circular evaluator on bare metal from BIOS. It also includes a readable portable C reference implementation of the same LISP interpreter with a readline-like REPL.
Use cases
- boot a LISP interpreter from a floppy disk on bare metal
- study the smallest possible LISP implementation
- run John McCarthy's meta-circular evaluator
- learn how LISP can be bootstrapped from scratch
- experiment with a tiny REPL in a QEMU or emulator environment
When to choose
- you want the tiniest true LISP implementation for educational or recreational purposes
- you're interested in bootstrapping programming languages from bare metal
- you want a readable C reference for a minimal LISP interpreter
When to avoid
- you need a practical, full-featured LISP or Scheme for real applications
- you need performance, garbage collection, or standard library support
- you want a maintained general-purpose interpreter for production use
Facets
application · maturity stable
interpreter programming-language compiler programming-languages compilers operating-systems education windows cpp cross-platform lisp boot-sector bootloader meta-circular-evaluator minimalism assembly bare-metal retro-computing linux macos
1 source
- readme: https://github.com/jart/sectorlisp · fetched 2026-08-28 · c36a97f13a97
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| jart/sectorlisp | main | 71 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem