[Slib-discuss] SLIB 31b Installation Problems with Guile 1.8.6

[Tom Browder]

I recently had a struggle getting slib 3b1 to work with the latest guile
release (1.8.6), and I reported the following to the guile mailing
lists (Ludo' suggested I also report here):

begin quote===>

I believe para. 6.1.1 of the guile reference manual
needs to be rewritten since the procedures don't seem to work as
advertised.  Following is the wording I suggest based on my experience
with guile 1.8.6 and the latest slib release (3b1):

==========

6.1.1 SLIB installation

The following procedure works, e.g., with SLIB version 3b1 (see SLIB
installation):

 1. Unpack SLIB and install it using make install from its directory. By
    default, this will install SLIB in /usr/local/lib/slib/. Running make
    installinfo installs its documentation, by default under
    /usr/local/info/.

 2. Create a symlink in the Guile directory to SLIB, e.g.:

              mkdir -p /usr/local/share/guile/site
              ln -s /usr/local/lib/slib /usr/local/share/guile/site/slib

 3. Use Guile to create the catalog file, e.g.,:

              # guile
              guile> (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
              guile> (require 'new-catalog)
              guile> (quit)

    The catalog data should now be in /usr/local/share/guile/site/slibcat.

    If instead you get an error such as:

        Unbound variable: scheme-implementation-type

    then a solution is to get a newer version of Guile, or to modify
ice-9/slib.scm to use define-public for the offending variables.

 4. Test the installation by executing the following at the command line:

              guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)"

==========

Notice that the instructions for setting environment variables, for
some reason, did not work for me.  I have seen several other threads
from other folks who have had the same experience, i.e., environment
variables not working.

Notice also that the directory /usr/local/share/guile/site was not
produced during the guile installation, and putting the slib directory
under /usr/local/share/guile/1.8 didn't work either.

<===end quote

Note the procedures listed in the slib manual didn't work either.

Note also that I installed both programs from source (on a Linux
Centos 5.2 x86_64 system).

Regards,

-Tom

Tom Browder
Niceville, Florida
USA