Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: in-tree pristines fatally wounded (merge-fest etc)

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Samuel" == Samuel A Falvo, <Samuel> writes:

    Samuel> I haven't been following this thread in depth, so forgive
    Samuel> me if I'm way off base.  But perhaps using some Scheme
    Samuel> interpreter like Guile or pika would come in handy here.

This is exactly what itla is supposed to be about.

However, if you look at the code for the tla driver program, what
you'll see is a command interpreter that does basically what you
proceed to suggest, except for providing control structures for
looping and conditional execution of commands.  And of course it's
less flexible because the searching for libraries is done at build
time.

    Samuel> This way, it'd be very easy to extend tla's built-in
    Samuel> command-set just by dropping in Scheme files.

Right.  But willy-nilly extension is exactly what people who want to
create other language bindings (for example) want to avoid.

The flip side of that problem is that if what is later judged to be
core functionality is implemented in Scheme in a Scheme-ish way,
people creating (eg) Python bindings will have to embed the Scheme
interpreter in their binding module.  Ugh.

    Samuel> Is this a good idea?  If not, why not?

As a _complement_ to tla (more generally, a library of primitive
routines which might admit several language bindings and driver
programs), this is exactly what itla is intended to do.

As a _substitute_ for tla, it suffers from both the merits and
demerits of Emacs (although currently on a smaller scale ;-).

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