LispKit on Homebrew

Friday, December 26, 2025

For use cases on macOS requiring a terminal, it is now much easier to install the read-eval-print loop of LispKit via the popular package manager Homebrew. Once Homebrew has been set up, simply enter the following command:

brew install lispkit

This installs LispKit and makes the read-eval-print loop (REPL) of LispKit available as the lispkit command:

[~] lispkit -x
LispKit Scheme 2.6.0 (2025-12-22 00:51)
Copyright © 2016–2025 Matthias Zenger. All rights reserved.
[enabled run loop]
>

Over the last two years, many LispPad-only libraries have been made available directly in LispKit, e.g. (lisppad draw map), (lisppad location) , often only with minimal API changes. For using libraries that are based on asynchronous APIs, it is important to specify the -x parameter when invoking lispkit , otherwise execution may stall indefinitely. -x sets up a macOS run loop to enable the usage of asynchronous APIs.