Re: My Guile Wishlist

[Rob Browning]

Evan Prodromou <address@hidden> writes:

> So, while I've been thinking about Guile, I've been considering some
> of the things that I wish were part of the system that aren't. Because
> they're on my mind right now, I figure I'll post them.
>
> 1. I wish there weren't so much detritus in the Scheme interface that
>    Guile provides.

There's a plan to clean this up -- presuming you're talking about the
scm_/gh_ interfaces.  See devel/policy/names.text.  We've also decided
to eventually drop the gh_ interface and fully document/cleanup the
scm_interface.  This is a GOOD THING as it takes the status of both
out of limbo and makes it clear where efforts should be spent.

However, this transition will take a while and there will have to be
scm_c_ equivalents for all the important gh_ functions first.

> 3. I wish that when I loaded Guile, I could get a system with only
>    R5RS Scheme + modules support, until I started loading stuff. I
>    wish that anything in Guile that was an enhancement to Scheme had
>    to be loaded with (use-modules).

This has long been a goal, but hasn't gotten a lot of attention lately.

> 4. I wish that I could do this:
>
>    #! /usr/bin/env guile                         
>    !#

I suspect some kind of functionality like this, though perhaps invoked
via a different binary name will probably come -- if I recall
correctly, this (or something similar) is what the SRFI wants.

> 5. I wish I could figure out the scm_ interface.

See (1) -- this should be forthcoming as we make the transition and
clean things up.

> 6. I wish that I could add Guile to existing programs, like Apache,
>    with those programs' loadable module systems, without having to
>    modify the program's "main" function.

As you wish -- see the docs for scm_init_guile in the 1.5.X info
pages, and give thanks to those who figured out the attendant stack
trick(s) :>

> 7. I really, really wish there was a mod_guile. Did I mention that
>    already?

Talk to Dale Smith.  (Hi dsmith :>)

> 9. I wish that Guile was so good that GNU projects wouldn't even
>     think about using any other scripting/extension language.

We'll see if we can arrange that :>

> 10. I wish that there was a project library with everything under the
>     sun that you could want in it.

This is an *important* point, but I'm not quite sure how to address it
yet.

> So, let me re-iterate: I love Guile. I use it all the time. But these
> things would make me happier than I am now.

In addition, one looming concern I have, is that we make sure not to
put ourselves in an ugly position because libtool and more
particularly ltdl make it *very hard* to DTRT.  You can't
create/install multiple versions of a shared library in a way that
would allow you, even with an explicit path to open the particular one
you need at runtime.  i.e. there's no

  lt_dlopen_interface("libfoo", 12);

and we *really* need one.

I do have some ideas how to fake this, though -- presuming the libtool
people aren't able to or don't want to fix it.  I believe it's the
underlying cause of the libreadline problems people have been having.

-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org, @linuxdevel.com, and @debian.org
Previously @cs.utexas.edu
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