README

To use my Lisp Genetic Algorithm program, you must use the Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) implementation of Lisp. My program uses some non-portable extensions to Lisp to allow multithreading (performance will scale almost linearly with the number of CPU cores, up to the size of the population).

To install SBCL (on Linux) run the following commands:
$ wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/sbcl/sbcl-1.0.23-x86-linux-binary.tar.bz2
$ tar -jxvf sbcl-1.0.23-x86-linux-binary.tar.bz2
$ cd sbcl-1.0.23-x86-linux/
$ sudo sh install.sh

Note, that if you don't have sudo access, you can alternatively install SBCL in your home directory with the following commands:
$ INSTALL_ROOT=/home/me/install_dir sh install.sh
You will then need to add /home/me/install_dir/bin to your PATH environment variable with a command like:
$ export PATH=/home/me/install_dir/bin/:$PATH
You will then need to set the SBCL_HOME environment variable, so that sbcl can find its core, with a command like:
$ export SBCL_HOME=/home/me/install_dir/lib/sbcl/
Remember, you only need to run the above commands if you can't do "sudo sh install.sh"

Before you run SBCL, you might want to use this opportunity to tweak a few settings in the global.lisp file. All the defaults are pretty reasonable, but you may want to, for example, change the output directory (by modifying the *output-directory* special variable).

Now that SBCL is installed, you will want to run it. If you're working with large images or populations, be sure to use the --dynamic-space-size flag to increase the HEAP size. For example, to use a 3GB heap, run:
$ sbcl --dynamic-space-size 3000
For smallish images (less than a few tens of thousands of pixels) with smallish populations (less than 50 or so), that shouldn't be neccessary and you can just run:
$ sbcl

Now that you are in the SBCL interpreter type the following commands, replacing anything with all caps as appropriate:
(require 'asdf)
(push "FULL_PATH_TO_MY_PROJECT_WITH_TRAILING_SLASH" asdf:*central-registry*)
(asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :ga)
(ga:solution "FULL_PATH_TO_BITMAP_TO_IMITATE")

The first command loads Another System Definition Facility (ASDF).
The second tells ASDF where to find my project.
The third tells ASDF to load my project (based on the details found in my ga.asd definition file)
And the final command runs the program to position polygons to look like the bitmap to imitate.

I'm including a bitmaps you could use (japan.bmp, mccarthy-small.bmp, mccarthy_face.bmp, monalisa.bmp, monalisa_face.bmp).
I'm also including a few videos of the evolution in progress (japan.mp4, mccarthy.mp4, monalisa.mp4).