Show HN: A Lisp where each function call runs a Docker container

Hacker News · Feb 19, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Docker Lisp A Docker image is a piece of executable code that produces some output given some input. Requirements Docker Setup First, build the base images and builtins. ./scripts/build-base ./scripts/build-builtins Then, run the tests. Be patient. ./scripts/run-tests Usage Run eval to evaluate expressions. ./scripts/run eval "(cons 1 2)" Pass --trace to run to see all calls. ./scripts/run --trace eval "(car (cdr (cons 1 (cons 2 (list)))))" You can also use docker stats and docker events to watch evaluation. You can write programs: FROM docker-lisp/eval CMD ["(define fact (lambda (n) (if (number-equals n 0) 1 (multiply n (fact (subtract n 1))))))", "(fact 3)"] Build them with ./scripts/build <program path> [name] or ./scripts/build <program path> # Uses the filename if no name is specified Then run with ./scripts/run <name> Scripts Script Purpose build <file> [name] Build a Dockerfile into docker-lisp/<name>. Defaults to basename. build-base Build base images (docker-lisp/base-racket, docker-lisp/base-call) build-builtins Build all builtin images run [--trace] [--no-cleanup] <image> [args] Run a docker-lisp/<image> container run-tests [--no-trace] [--rebuild-base] [prefix filter] Run the tests (with traces by default) clean Kill all docker-lisp/* containers and remove all built docker-lisp/* images