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GNU Guile 3.0

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Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#41

Post by hajile »

wsgeek wrote: post #36

I would like to ask a genuine question (not trying to provoke anyone!). Where is a good use case for Scheme these days (in any form?). I really love the idea of the language but I can't figure out where it really does a _better_ job that these things: -- JavaScript/Typescript for in-browser or even some server-side stuff (e.g., NodeJS) -- Python seems to be dominant for non-browser code that doesn't need to be fast (…

I'd say scheme fits into the python niche rather well. It's faster, easy to learn, and usually has good C interopt (or great interopt in the case of ones like chicken).

Scheme: fix your damn documentation

I have to know that SRFI (scheme request for implementation) is a thing. Then I have to look over hundreds of them to find the one I want (do I want SRFI 69, 90, 125, or 126 for hash tables?). Then I have to find that obscure doc somewhere that says which SRFI are supported. Then I have to read the specification doc as the only source of documentation on https://srfi.schemers.org/.

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#42

Post by outworlder »

bjoli wrote: post #14
hencq wrote: post #8

Is there still any work being done on Guile Emacs? As I recall it basically worked a few years ago, but it doesn't seem to be maintained. I'm curious if these 3.0 speedups would translate there too.

Guile runs elisp just fine, although there are quite some low hanging optimization fruit to be picked. From the Emacs side I strongly doubt it will happen. The discussions that have been going on for faaaar less intrusive changes is staggering. Reading the discussions about the portable dumper (new in the upcoming emacs 27, proposed in 2014) is a nice 4 hours. That was in just about every measurable way a step forwar…

I thought people at my workplace loved to schedule meetings and talk endlessly about things that could have been easily implemented in less time than the meetings took. Then I remember emacs-devel... and it's infuriating. There's bikeshedding, and then there's how to paint the bikeshed, discussions about bikeshed compliance, if bikeshed should be called GNU/Bikeshed, if the bikeshed even supports non open-source bikes and how to make the bikeshed not compatible with them, and that's before the feature itself is even discussed. Even if it is already implemented and there's an actual patch.

> guile Emacs will never happen

Universe heat death is still far away, there's always hope.

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#43

Post by tjr »

chrisseaton wrote: post #35
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #29

I feel like the single most important reason Guile is not more popular is the focus on Linux. It is not even as easy to install it on Mac, afaict. I've seen unofficial binary builds for windows but they are hard to find... and probably they use cygwin? I wish Guile was readily available in other platforms (I wish their downloads page looked like this [1]...), but I'm guessing the main reason it is not is more philoso…

> It is not even as easy to install it on Mac brew install guile That's a bottle though. I don't know if it's hard to build but it isn't hard to install .

I've tried to build it on Mac in the past (years ago). I spent hours fiddling with it, and finally gave up and ran brew install guile. It might be better now?

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#44

Post by coldtea »

chrisseaton wrote: post #35
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #29

I feel like the single most important reason Guile is not more popular is the focus on Linux. It is not even as easy to install it on Mac, afaict. I've seen unofficial binary builds for windows but they are hard to find... and probably they use cygwin? I wish Guile was readily available in other platforms (I wish their downloads page looked like this [1]...), but I'm guessing the main reason it is not is more philoso…

> It is not even as easy to install it on Mac brew install guile That's a bottle though. I don't know if it's hard to build but it isn't hard to install .

Can't understand why a Lisp would be hard to build on a Mac or elsewhere. What are the dependencies besides some common C libraries (e.g. for math, unicode handling, etc)?

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#45

Post by chrisseaton »

coldtea wrote: post #44
chrisseaton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not even as easy to install it on Mac brew install guile That's a bottle though. I don't know if it's hard to build but it isn't hard to install .

Can't understand why a Lisp would be hard to build on a Mac or elsewhere. What are the dependencies besides some common C libraries (e.g. for math, unicode handling, etc)?

> Can't understand why a Lisp would be hard to build on a Mac or elsewhere.

Huge number of complex and extremely platform-specific dependencies and modules, like garbage collectors, foreign function interfaces, native code generators, etc, etc. All inherently very platform-specific, fragile, and dependent on specific tooling. Very much not plain C code.

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#46

Post by rscho »

wsgeek wrote: post #36

I would like to ask a genuine question (not trying to provoke anyone!). Where is a good use case for Scheme these days (in any form?). I really love the idea of the language but I can't figure out where it really does a _better_ job that these things: -- JavaScript/Typescript for in-browser or even some server-side stuff (e.g., NodeJS) -- Python seems to be dominant for non-browser code that doesn't need to be fast (…

Programming language research. Nothing better than scheme for that.

Also quite good for building small programs with no/minimal depencies from scratch. Which I suspect reduces to my first statement...

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#47

Post by davexunit »

outworlder wrote: post #42
bjoli wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guile runs elisp just fine, although there are quite some low hanging optimization fruit to be picked. From the Emacs side I strongly doubt it will happen. The discussions that have been going on for faaaar less intrusive changes is staggering. Reading the discussions about the portable dumper (new in the upcoming emacs 27, proposed in 2014) is a nice 4 hours. That was in just about every measurable way a step forwar…

I thought people at my workplace loved to schedule meetings and talk endlessly about things that could have been easily implemented in less time than the meetings took. Then I remember emacs-devel... and it's infuriating. There's bikeshedding, and then there's how to paint the bikeshed, discussions about bikeshed compliance, if bikeshed should be called GNU/Bikeshed, if the bikeshed even supports non open-source bike…

changing anything in GNU (with a few exceptions) is like pulling teeth. it is endlessly frustrating. every proposed change, no matter how small, will be met with essay length responses from the old guard about why it shouldn't be changed. just one example of many: gnu.org is still managed via a cvs repo because rms doesn't like git and it doesn't matter to him that newcomers find it to be a roadblock. it's amazing that anyone has the patience to swim against that current and improve things.

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#48

Post by guenthert »

Uh, this is all nice and such I suppose, but how do I install it? The README file in the git repository refers to an INSTALL file, which doesn't seem to exist as well as to a ./configure script which doesn't either.

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#49

Post by ken »

guenthert wrote: post #48

Uh, this is all nice and such I suppose, but how do I install it? The README file in the git repository refers to an INSTALL file, which doesn't seem to exist as well as to a ./configure script which doesn't either.

./configure is a generated file. It's not committed to the repository. If you download a release (like "guile-3.0.0.tar.gz"), it has the files you're looking for.

Or you can learn autotools and do it yourself, but I don't recommend opening that can of worms.

Re: GNU Guile 3.0

#50

Post by guenthert »

ken wrote: post #49
guenthert wrote: post #48

Uh, this is all nice and such I suppose, but how do I install it? The README file in the git repository refers to an INSTALL file, which doesn't seem to exist as well as to a ./configure script which doesn't either.

./configure is a generated file. It's not committed to the repository. If you download a release (like "guile-3.0.0.tar.gz"), it has the files you're looking for. Or you can learn autotools and do it yourself, but I don't recommend opening that can of worms.

Hmmh, it's been a decade or two since I used the autotools last, so I'll need a hint. I find it slightly disturbing that the README file is of little help though.

Further, if I try naively $ sh -x ./autogen.sh then that fails on a dependency on libtoolize, of which I never have heard of and which doesn't seem to be known to bananian.

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