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: Guile emacs thread (again) Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 19:20:22 +0300 Message-ID: <83iokq5g3d.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87wq97i78i.fsf@earlgrey.lan> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1410711662 9628 80.91.229.3 (14 Sep 2014 16:21:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 16:21:02 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Christopher Allan Webber Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Sep 14 18:20:56 2014 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 1XTCXo-0006yu-9q for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 18:20:56 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:55320 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XTCXn-0004uI-Sb for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:20:55 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:59065) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XTCXW-0004u2-78 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:20:44 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XTCXQ-0003rl-Bv for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:20:37 -0400 Original-Received: from mtaout29.012.net.il ([80.179.55.185]:52285) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XTCXP-0003rd-PB for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 12:20:32 -0400 Original-Received: from conversion-daemon.mtaout29.012.net.il by mtaout29.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0NBW00F00FXED200@mtaout29.012.net.il> for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 19:20:14 +0300 (IDT) Original-Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([87.69.4.28]) by mtaout29.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0NBW00EHKG1QH110@mtaout29.012.net.il>; Sun, 14 Sep 2014 19:20:14 +0300 (IDT) In-reply-to: <87wq97i78i.fsf@earlgrey.lan> X-012-Sender: halo1@inter.net.il X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 80.179.55.185 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:174293 Archived-At: > From: Christopher Allan Webber > Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 11:29:09 -0500 >=20 > Anyway, it seems that BT Templeton's emacs on guile project this su= mmer > has gone fairly well, and it looks like almost everything runs. Se= e: > http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs >=20 > I remember reading Andy Wingo's email about this a few years ago, > "guile and emacs and elisp, oh my!": > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2010-04/msg00665.h= tml >=20 > I found it very inspiring. It seems those things are fairly close. >=20 > So this email is partly a: > - What now? What's the chance of work towards guilemacs moving ov= er to > an official emacs git branch, and that port happening, anytime s= oon? Well, the "User-visible issues" there sound pretty scary to me. Evidently, even building it, and even on GNU/Linux, is not without problems ("it compiles and starts up if you struggle a little"). Please also note the "best just test on GNU/Linux for now" comment, and a similar TODO item "find beta testers for non-GNU platforms". This matches my experience with Guile -- it needs some serious work t= o be reasonably portable to platforms other than GNU. Right now, too many important features will be simply disabled if the configure script finds they are not provided by the standard libraries. Emacs is eons ahead of that. And it doesn't help that one needs a hacked version of Guile for this (i.e. have 2 different Guile versions installed on the same machine). So IMO, Someone=C2=AE should invest a non-trivial amount of work to a= t least resolve the main issues mentioned on the TODO page. Otherwise, I doubt that someone will consider using such an Emacs for serious work, and without that it will never get past the alpha-testing stage= , whether it is an official branch of the Emacs repo or not. Also, I think there are some design issues that need to be discussed, rather than decided by a single individual, because the consideration= s for how to unify Guile with Emacs, i.e. which Emacs objects and methods should be based on Guile, are entirely non-trivial. One example is non-ASCII text and string representation -- AFAICS GuileEmacs wants to convert them back and forth from/to Scheme strings, but the internal representation of text in Emacs is not 100% UTF-8, it has a couple of extensions, and it's not clear how best to support that. Another potential issue is (or could be) the use of mmap for buffer memory -- I guess the current build simply sidesteps that because mma= p isn't used on GNU/Linux, but otherwise how would this play with libgc and threads? I'm sure these 2 are just the tip of an iceberg. > (I'm mid-compile of the guile wip branch right now...!) Did you succeed?