Delivering self-contained Lisp applications (whether as executables, or
as scripts) is a concern beyond the ANSI standard, and is implemented
differently by each and every Lisp vendor. In theory, Clon should
have nothing to do with it; it’s just a library that you might want to
use in order to process the command-line. Unfortunately (and precisely
because of the lack of standardization), there are some non-orthogonal
concerns that need to be dealt with carefully for Clon to work
properly in all situations.
The following sections provide some important information regarding the
use of Clon in standalone executables, or in regular interactive Lisp
images. Before going into the details, let me first introduce the
executablep function, a predicate that returns t when
called from a standalone executable. You may find this function useful,
for example in order to write portable code deciding on whether or not
to quit your application at the end of Clon’s main function. You’d
quit a dumped executable, but you’d continue to a REPL in an interactive
variation.