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Re: GH. Again.
From: |
Neil Jerram |
Subject: |
Re: GH. Again. |
Date: |
14 Jun 2001 21:49:11 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 |
>>>>> "Marius" == Marius Vollmer <address@hidden> writes:
Marius> The summary: the GH interface is moved out of the central
Marius> proper of Guile. It will be provided for quite some time,
Marius> but only for compatibility reasons. We will steer people
Marius> towards using (a cleaned up version of) the `scm_'
Marius> interface. Ultimately, the GH interface will end up in
Marius> its own distribution, ready to be taken by anyone who
Marius> wants to work on it.
I agree as well.
I do still worry a bit about the GH users who'll be left unsupported,
but going with a clean scm_ interface is undoubtedly the best approach
for the future.
To avoid giving any further false impressions/hopes to those GH users,
I think we should
- state clearly for how many more releases GH will be part of Guile
core (I suggest 1.6.x and 1.8.x only.)
- for these releases, commit to supporting the GH interface as it was
at the time of the 1.4 release
- after these releases, commit to removing GH completely
- remove anything that's been added to GH since 1.4, and don't add
anything else to it.
The biggest thing affected by the last point is gh_init() - so people
will just have to write scm_init_guile() instead.
Marius> There is confusion over the status of the GH interface.
Marius> It is at the same time advertised as _the_ API for users
Marius> of libguile, and mostly neglected by us developers. We
Marius> need to clean up this confusion by stating what the GH is
Marius> interface is about, how it came about historically, and
Marius> how we plan on realizing its promises.
Marius> As far as I can see, the main virtues of the GH interface
Marius> were to be portability between different Scheme
Marius> implementations, and ease of use compared to the more
Marius> awkward scm_ interface.
Right. I think a key point here - which a lot of more recent Guile
users may not realize - is how _very_ awkward the scm_ interface used
to be. Now scm_ is usable, clean and portable enough that GH isn't
needed.
Marius> Thus, my plan would be to
Marius> - Make sure that libguile is easy to use without the GH
Marius> interface. For every (sensible) GH feature there should
Marius> be a easy way to do the same thing with the scm_
Marius> interface.
Sounds good. I'm not aware of any GH features for which this isn't
trivial, but we should be careful anyway.
Marius> - Document how to get by without GH for people who want
Marius> to stop using it in their existing programs.
Marius> - Reflect this change in policy in the Reference Manual.
Marius> The section about GH should be put into a separate manual,
Marius> and the Reference Manual should talk about the scm_
Marius> interface exclusively.
I think the "document how to get by without GH" naturally fits with
the separate section documenting GH: for everything that is documented
there, we also say how to do it using the scm_ interface.
As regards documenting the scm_ interface, there was a discussion (on
the Guile mailing list) at the end of 1998 where the strong consensus
seemed to be for documenting the Scheme and C APIs together. This
means restructuring the existing Parts II and V into two new parts:
- Introduction to Scheme
- Guile API Reference (covering both Scheme and C)
There will also be C only documentation to put somewhere, covering
guidelines for C code.
My plan was to start on this restructuring after the 1.6.0 release.
Neil
- Re: GH. Again., (continued)
- Re: GH. Again., Rob Browning, 2001/06/13
- Re: GH. Again., Marius Vollmer, 2001/06/13
- Re: GH. Again., Dirk Herrmann, 2001/06/14
- Re: GH. Again., Michael Livshin, 2001/06/14
- Re: GH. Again., Marius Vollmer, 2001/06/14
- Re: GH. Again., Neil Jerram, 2001/06/14
- Re: GH. Again., Marius Vollmer, 2001/06/14
Re: GH. Again., Sam Tregar, 2001/06/13
Re: GH. Again.,
Neil Jerram <=
- Re: GH. Again., Rob Browning, 2001/06/14
- Re: GH. Again., Marius Vollmer, 2001/06/16
- Re: GH. Again., Bruce Korb, 2001/06/16
- Re: GH. Again., Neil Jerram, 2001/06/17
- Re: GH. Again., Marius Vollmer, 2001/06/17
- Re: GH. Again., Rob Browning, 2001/06/17
- Re: GH. Again., Neil Jerram, 2001/06/17
- Re: GH. Again., Marius Vollmer, 2001/06/18
- Re: GH. Again., Neil Jerram, 2001/06/18
- Re: GH. Again., Michael Livshin, 2001/06/18