Interesting since this can compile down to C code , I was thinking maybe we can convert this to cosmopolitan c code as well?
that is to make it so that a single executable can on everything
Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
11–20 of 73 posts
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#12I believe the domain name is a reference to this anecdote https://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#13The make && make install doesn't create the chicken-crunch executable which is used in the examples, nor do I see 'crunch' in any of the build scripts. Any guesses?
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#14> No support for first class continuations
I'm not sure about how people would feel about this. I have mixed feelings. It feels like a loss of many things. What are the gains from ditching continuations?
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#15The make && make install doesn't create the chicken-crunch executable which is used in the examples, nor do I see 'crunch' in any of the build scripts. Any guesses?
The installation bit mentions doing:
> /bin/chicken-install -test crunch
Edit: That's because this is an "egg", which is an external library/package not part of the core chicken install
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#16> No support for first class continuations I'm not sure about how people would feel about this. I have mixed feelings. It feels like a loss of many things. What are the gains from ditching continuations?
Given the intent to have relatively straightforward C code and a tiny runtime, you pretty much have to ditch them or you're not going to get anywhere at all.
Plus honestly most of the uses of continuations that would make sense in the sort of relatively low level code this is aimed at can be built out of a few special purpose macros (and possibly a small amount of crying) - scheme code tends to lean on first class continuations for a lot of things that don't really need them, Because It Can.
e.g. Paul Graham's On Lisp shows how to build (a subset of) continuations out of macros, and getting something like clojure's 'recur' out of that would probably give you simpler macros than pg's code uses.
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#17> No support for first class continuations I'm not sure about how people would feel about this. I have mixed feelings. It feels like a loss of many things. What are the gains from ditching continuations?
From the article:
> What is needed is a small, portable compiler that generates more or less "natural" C code with minimal dependencies and runtime system that supports at least the basic constructs of the language and that puts an emphasis on producing efficient code, even if some of the more powerful features of Scheme are not available.
Since C doesn't support continuations, it is not possible to have continuations and at the same time generate "natural" C code.
Consider how you would implement first class continuations. It's not possible to do CPS transformation (given the goal of natural code generation) - since that's a whole program transformation.
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#18The interesting part is how few trade-offs had to be made to make GC-less (ref-counting) Scheme-to-C compilation attainable, and how closely CRUNCH adheres to R7RS.
Notable is the lack of call/cc, but in my "armchair expert" opinion, it's the ugliest part of the language. Yes, continuations as a first-class object are elegant and succinct, but in order to do anything actually useful with them (like implementing exceptions), you need library code, which makes them much less composable.
I think there's a much more pleasant and practical language lurking somewhere between R6RS "big" and traditional "small" Scheme, but I feel it would take a BDFL to flesh it out.
(Meanwhile, back to fixing my init.el.)
Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#19For Common Lispers such as myself, who are vaguely aware of developments in the Scheme space: the most important difference between CRUNCH and Chicken appears to be that, while both compile down to C/object code, CRUNCH is additionally targeting a statically-typed subset of Scheme. Opinion: this is great. The aversion of Lispers to static types is historical rather than intrinsic and reflects the relative difference…
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Re: Crunch – a Scheme compiler with a minimal runtime
#20The very first rudimentary standalone example:
(define (main) (display "Hello world\n"))
Error: main: global variable `scheme#display' has unknown type