From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs and Guile (was: GSoC projects related to Emacs) Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:09:21 +0300 Message-ID: <83ehrw6p26.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87k41ofsl8.fsf@gnu.org> <87d37p1o7u.fsf@gmail.com> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1334041906 24769 80.91.229.3 (10 Apr 2012 07:11:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 07:11:46 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Leo Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Apr 10 09:11:45 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SHVEs-000668-CC for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:11:42 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45790 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHVEr-0005T0-FT for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:11:41 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:36968) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHVEn-0005Sk-Kg for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:11:39 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHVEh-0008E4-1q for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:11:37 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il ([80.179.55.172]:55574) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SHVEg-0008Dx-Pg for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:11:30 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0M2900F005A33O00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:11:14 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([84.229.57.204]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0M2900EB45API0A1@a-mtaout22.012.net.il>; Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:11:14 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <87d37p1o7u.fsf@gmail.com> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Solaris 10 (beta) X-Received-From: 80.179.55.172 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:149553 Archived-At: > From: Leo > Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:36:05 +0800 > > On 2012-04-10 06:28 +0800, Bastien wrote: > > ,----[ Guile-Emacs ] > > | > > | Use libguile as the basis for Emacs's Lisp implementation and begin > > | replacing the Elisp interpreter with Guile > > | > > | http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2012/bpt/23002 > > `---- > > I am looking forward to this ;) I don't. FWIW, my (admittedly short) experience with Guile is that it is not reliable or stable on anything but GNU/Linux, and even there it has much to catch up. It has a lot to gain in terms of portability before it can be considered seriously as an alternative to ELisp, or even its sibling on equal rights. As an example, look at the series of reports from my (eventually successful) attempt to build Guile natively on MS-Windows. The series starts here: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guile/2012-01/msg00034.html Please read the diffs and the analysis I posted, and you will see that very important core features will simply not exist if some library function or API are not supported by the underlying environment. So much so that some .scm files that are part of Guile itself will simply fail to compile (and break the entire build of Guile), when one of these features is missing. To me, the failure to build in these cases is a clear sign of a package that is not ready for prime time. I think simply nobody tried to build or work with it seriously on any system except latest versions of GNU/Linux (and a couple of others), see this thread: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2011-09/msg00064.html Or consider Guile's support of non-ASCII characters, which relies on libiconv with no additional features -- we cannot possibly consider this complete enough to replace what we have in Emacs now. And before you consider the above FUD and nothing else: GNU Make recently added Guile support (available only from the Make CVS repository for now), and even though Make's needs are much simpler than Emacs's, you can get the feeling about the problems in this thread: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2012-01/msg00130.html Etc., etc. I would suggest some serious analysis of Guile as it stands today by someone who knows much more about it than I do, in comparison with ELisp and the related Emacs infrastructure, and then some serious discussions with Guile developers about the gaps, before we can regard Guile as a contender. I invite anyone with sufficiently good knowledge of Emacs internals to look at the Guile equivalents and see the significant differences, gaps, etc. (or maybe my prejudice and misunderstandings, who knows?). If we want to seriously talk about Guile, let's first invest some effort in understanding what we are talking about.