SLIB

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

I'd like to fix the SLIB issue in 1.8.3.

SLIB 3a4 works perfectly well with 1.8.  The thing is that `(ice-9
slib)' is of no use.  Instead of using it, I followed the SLIB
instructions:

  $ guile -l /usr/share/slib/init/guile.init 
  guile> (require 'primes)
  guile> (prime? 13)
  #t

Note that the first time you use SLIB, it will create the library
catalog, which requires write access to its directory.

Our `(ice-9 slib)' is essentially a duplicate of `guile.init'.  So I
think what we really want in `(ice-9 slib)' is this (as already
suggested by Greg [0]):

  (define-module (ice-9 slib))
  (load-from-path "guile.init")

Distributions could easily patch it so that it works out of the box.  On
Debian, that would become:

  (define-module (ice-9 slib))
  (load "/usr/share/slib/init/guile.init")

Now, it is true that `guile.init' contains too many Guile-specific
things that ought to be maintained out of SLIB, as Mikael noted [1], but
for the time being, I suggest that we just stick to this approach.
FWIW, other `.init' files that come with SLIB are quite long as well.

Ok to rewrite `(ice-9 slib)' as shown above?

Thanks,
Ludovic.

[0] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.devel/6644
[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.devel/6645