Coexistence of different Guile versions

Coexistence of different Guile versions

[Tommi Höynälänmaa]

Guile (at least the Debian version) is designed so that different
versions (e.g. 2.0 and 2.2) can coexist in the same system. However,
this is not so for packages guile-xxx-dev. Consequently, many software
libraries (such as guile-gnome-platform) have to be compiled for a
single Guile version and they can't be used for several Guile versions
in the same system.

Could this be changed? For example, we could rename libguile.h to
libguile-<version>.h and do the same for Guile libraries.

      - Tommi Höynälänmaa

Re: Coexistence of different Guile versions

[Greg Troxel]

Tommi Höynälänmaa <tommi.hoynalanmaa@gmail.com> writes:

> Guile (at least the Debian version) is designed so that different
> versions (e.g. 2.0 and 2.2) can coexist in the same system. However,
> this is not so for packages guile-xxx-dev. Consequently, many software
> libraries (such as guile-gnome-platform) have to be compiled for a
> single Guile version and they can't be used for several Guile versions
> in the same system.
>
> Could this be changed? For example, we could rename libguile.h to
> libguile-<version>.h and do the same for Guile libraries.

I see this as a packaging issue.

In pkgsrc, one can install multiple guile versions, each with headers
(pkgsrc does not have the notion of -dev for headers; packages just have
headers).  It does this by using prefixes.  For example guile 2.2 is
built using the prefix /usr/pkg/guile/2.2 instead of the usual /usr/pkg.

I think it's far easier to build different versions in different
prefixes, letting depending packages add in that prefix, than to try to
rename every file that's installed to have a version in it.


The real issue though is that guile seems to not have a stable enough
API that there are lots of things out there that have to use old
versions.  Fixing that would be best :-)  but I realize that everything
has a good reason and that's easier said than done.

Re: Coexistence of different Guile versions

[Tommi Höynälänmaa]

I looked at the Debian packages guile-2.0-dev and guile-2.2-dev. It 
might be sufficient to just add version suffixes to files 
/usr/bin/guild, /usr/bin/guile-config, and /usr/bin/guile-snarf and then 
using "update-alternatives --install" for these scripts.

      - Tommi Höynälänmaa

Re: Coexistence of different Guile versions

[Matt Wette]

On 3/10/19 8:23 AM, Tommi Höynälänmaa wrote:
> Guile (at least the Debian version) is designed so that different
> versions (e.g. 2.0 and 2.2) can coexist in the same system. However,
> this is not so for packages guile-xxx-dev. Consequently, many software
> libraries (such as guile-gnome-platform) have to be compiled for a
> single Guile version and they can't be used for several Guile versions
> in the same system.
>
> Could this be changed? For example, we could rename libguile.h to
> libguile-<version>.h and do the same for Guile libraries.
>
>      - Tommi Höynälänmaa

Shouldn't the solution be -I/usr/include/guile/2.2/libguile.h

mwette$ pkg-config --cflags --libs guile-2.2
-pthread -I/usr/include/guile/2.2 -lguile-2.2 -lgc