Re: Guile and GSL

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello,

"Jason R. Green" <jg525@cam.ac.uk> writes:

> Guile and GSL are two great GNU packages for building scientific
> computing software. In my own work I need support for GSL data types
> (e.g., vectors, matrices) and my own types built from them. I know
> this has come up in the past:
>
> (1) http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Starting-and-controlling-the-interpreter.html
> (2) http://sources.redhat.com/ml/guile/1998-10/msg00332.html
> (3) http://sources.redhat.com/ml/guile/1998-10/msg00431.html
>
> I also read about a similar project
> (http://community.schemewiki.org/?GEE-Guile-GSL) being withdrawn from
> Gna! but I can't find the thread now. What is the current consensus in
> the guile-devel community? Is there interest in this line of
> development?

I think having Guile bindings to GSL would be great.  Which line of
development are you referring to?

FWIW, I think it would be great if these bindings were eventually
integrated in the GSL package proper.  To that end, you should make sure
to follow the GNU Coding Standards, to provide good test coverage and
documentation, and to make sure copyright can be assigned to the FSF.

[...]

> I have gsl_matrix and gsl_vector smobs, their make, mark, free, and
> print functions, as well as wrapper functions that zero each. I also
> have functions for converting between GSL and SCM vectors.
> Unfortunately, as discussed in the threads at (2) above, defining new
> smobs may not be the best approach.

I suppose SRFI-4 homogeneous numeric vectors[*] would be a good fit for
GSL vectors and matrices, and you wouldn’t need to create any new SMOB
type.  That said, I’m sure you know GSL much better than me.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.

[*] Note that in 1.9 the ‘(srfi srfi-4 gnu)’ module provides vectors of
    complex numbers in addition to those defined by SRFI-4.