Scheme Implementers

Scheme Implementers

[Noah Lavine]

Hello all,

This is unusual as it is not really a Guile-specific message, but I
was reading recently about the r7rs process and then about SRFIs, and
I had an idea.

I think there should be a mailing list for people who implement
Schemes, to sort of coordinate our non-standard features. For
instance, you could email the list and say "hey, Guile is thinking of
adding a unicode library with this interface. Does anyone else want to
converge on an interface together?" Or better yet, "does anyone want
to cooperate in the making of this library?" (But that's less likely
because of license concerns, I suppose.)

As far as I can tell, there is nothing serving this purpose right now.
The SRFI process *begins* with a complete interface design, which
doesn't work for work in progress. The rnrs standardization process
only standardizes things that a lot of implementations have, so that
wouldn't work for this.

This would make things a lot nicer for people who use Scheme, because
more programs would be portable. It might also make life better for
people who implement Scheme, because it could make sharing work a lot
easier, and thus make every Scheme implementation better.

The implementation of this idea is trivial. I could set up a Google
group in five minutes, or any one of the Schemes which already host
their own mailing lists could add this.

So my question is, do people think this is a good idea or not? If so,
I will do it.

Noah

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Noah,

Noah Lavine <noah.b.lavine@gmail.com> writes:

> I think there should be a mailing list for people who implement
> Schemes, to sort of coordinate our non-standard features. For
> instance, you could email the list and say "hey, Guile is thinking of
> adding a unicode library with this interface. Does anyone else want to
> converge on an interface together?" Or better yet, "does anyone want
> to cooperate in the making of this library?" (But that's less likely
> because of license concerns, I suppose.)

I think comp.lang.scheme is already a good place for this.  You quickly
get feedback and many implementors seem to participate in it.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Noah Lavine]

Hello,

> I think comp.lang.scheme is already a good place for this.  You quickly
> get feedback and many implementors seem to participate in it.

Oh, great. I didn't know about that.

Although I must say, it seems like there is a lot less coordination
among Schemes right now than there should be. So anything that already
exists can't be working too well.

Noah

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() Noah Lavine <noah.b.lavine@gmail.com>
() Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:23:39 -0500

   a lot less coordination among Schemes
   right now than there should be

Scheme is a fun platform for experimentation,
which is sometimes at odds w/ coordination.
Personally, i wouldn't sweat it overmuch.

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Hans Aberg]

On 29 Jan 2011, at 21:53, Ludovic Courtès wrote:

>> I think there should be a mailing list for people who implement
>> Schemes, to sort of coordinate our non-standard features. ...

> I think comp.lang.scheme is already a good place for this.  You  
> quickly
> get feedback and many implementors seem to participate in it.

The newsgroup did not seem very active. Is it still important?

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Andy Wingo]

On Sat 29 Jan 2011 23:54, Hans Aberg <haberg-1@telia.com> writes:

> On 29 Jan 2011, at 21:53, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>
>>> I think there should be a mailing list for people who implement
>>> Schemes, to sort of coordinate our non-standard features. ...
>
>> I think comp.lang.scheme is already a good place for this.  You
>> quickly
>> get feedback and many implementors seem to participate in it.
>
> The newsgroup did not seem very active. Is it still important?

There are also lists related to standardization:
r6rs-discuss@lists.r6rs.org, and scheme-reports@scheme-reports.org.
There are SRFI lists as well, I think.

The scheme-reports list seems to always end up in my spam box for some
reason, though.  I think I tried like three times to subscribe to it,
but never got the confirmation mails, becaus of some problem with that
list.  Still I think it is the most active list on the standardization
front.

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> On Sat 29 Jan 2011 23:54, Hans Aberg <haberg-1@telia.com> writes:
>
>> On 29 Jan 2011, at 21:53, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>
>>>> I think there should be a mailing list for people who implement
>>>> Schemes, to sort of coordinate our non-standard features. ...
>>
>>> I think comp.lang.scheme is already a good place for this.  You
>>> quickly
>>> get feedback and many implementors seem to participate in it.
>>
>> The newsgroup did not seem very active. Is it still important?
>
> There are also lists related to standardization:
> r6rs-discuss@lists.r6rs.org, and scheme-reports@scheme-reports.org.

The “R7RS” lists are accessible read-only via Gmane:

  http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.scheme.reports
  http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.scheme.reports.wg1
  http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.scheme.reports.wg2

It’s read-only because these are Google groups, which require a Google
account to post, I think, and the list admins insisted on allowing only
member postings...

> There are SRFI lists as well, I think.

Only per-SRFI, though.

> The scheme-reports list seems to always end up in my spam box for some
> reason, though.  I think I tried like three times to subscribe to it,
> but never got the confirmation mails, becaus of some problem with that
> list.  Still I think it is the most active list on the standardization
> front.

That’s because it takes a lot of talk to reinvent the wheel!  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Andy Wingo]

On Sun 30 Jan 2011 16:48, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> The “R7RS” lists are accessible read-only via Gmane:
>
>   http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.scheme.reports

I believe this one is available for anyone to post on.  The other two
are moderated.

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Noah Lavine]

Hello all,

Thanks a lot for the points. Let me be more specific and see what you
think of this idea, and if there is a good forum for dealing with it.

I think that having a C parser will be a good feature for Guile,
because it will let us make C FFI connection automatic by parsing C
header files. Other Scheme variants might want a similar feature. I
think it would be pretty neat if we could agree on a parse tree
format, so that people could write Scheme code to analyze C and it
would work in more places. I think it would be even cooler if other
variants thought that the C parser was so good they wanted to use
Guile's (thanks, LGPL!) and then contributed patches to it and code
that used it to do neat things. That way everyone would get more and
better tools.

My question is, what should I do to let other Scheme variants know
this is happening and get them involved? The r7rs lists seem like the
wrong place because this is not ready to become a standard feature of
anything, and the SRFI lists are only for completed SRFIs. I didn't
know about comp.lang.scheme, but now it sounds like it may or may not
still be useful. I could just post on a bunch of development mailing
lists, but it seemed like it would be better to have one list that
handled that (although maybe not).

Noah

On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sat 29 Jan 2011 23:54, Hans Aberg <haberg-1@telia.com> writes:
>
>> On 29 Jan 2011, at 21:53, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>
>>>> I think there should be a mailing list for people who implement
>>>> Schemes, to sort of coordinate our non-standard features. ...
>>
>>> I think comp.lang.scheme is already a good place for this.  You
>>> quickly
>>> get feedback and many implementors seem to participate in it.
>>
>> The newsgroup did not seem very active. Is it still important?
>
> There are also lists related to standardization:
> r6rs-discuss@lists.r6rs.org, and scheme-reports@scheme-reports.org.
> There are SRFI lists as well, I think.
>
> The scheme-reports list seems to always end up in my spam box for some
> reason, though.  I think I tried like three times to subscribe to it,
> but never got the confirmation mails, becaus of some problem with that
> list.  Still I think it is the most active list on the standardization
> front.
>
> Andy
> --
> http://wingolog.org/
>
>

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Noah,

I think several Schemes already have a dynamic FFI with a C parser.
Bigloo has one (info "(bigloo) Automatic extern clauses generation"),
and it’s GPL’d code, which we could reuse.  Larceny has something too.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Noah Lavine]

Hello,

> I think several Schemes already have a dynamic FFI with a C parser.
> Bigloo has one (info "(bigloo) Automatic extern clauses generation"),
> and it’s GPL’d code, which we could reuse.  Larceny has something too.

Oh, great. Can Guile reuse GPL'd code, though, since it is LGPL? I see
that Larceny is licensed under the LGPL, but the copyright is probably
not assigned to the FSF. Would reusing that be possible?

Just to be clear about the overall idea, what I'd like to do is to
work on new features with as many people as possible, and to duplicate
as little code as possible, because I think this would lead to more
cool things made with Scheme, which would ultimately be better for all
of us who like using the language. So that is why I would like to work
with other Schemes on things like the C parser.

Noah

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

>> I think several Schemes already have a dynamic FFI with a C parser.
>> Bigloo has one (info "(bigloo) Automatic extern clauses generation"),
>> and it’s GPL’d code, which we could reuse.  Larceny has something too.
>
> Oh, great. Can Guile reuse GPL'd code, though, since it is LGPL?

We could have GPL modules, though that would be a case-by-case
decision.

In this case it may be a bad idea; OTOH it could be argued that the C
parser is invoked only a compile-time, and thus users don’t have to be
GPL too, just like applications compiled with GCC don’t have to be GPL.
But, hmm, that’s tricky.  ;-)

> I see that Larceny is licensed under the LGPL, but the copyright is
> probably not assigned to the FSF. Would reusing that be possible?

Yes, if there are good reasons to do so.  There are several modules in
Guile with non-FSF copyright.

> Just to be clear about the overall idea, what I'd like to do is to
> work on new features with as many people as possible, and to duplicate
> as little code as possible, because I think this would lead to more
> cool things made with Scheme, which would ultimately be better for all
> of us who like using the language. So that is why I would like to work
> with other Schemes on things like the C parser.

Some people have been building software on top of R6RS with portability
in mind, like Andreas (hi!).  That’s another way to share efforts with
others.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Andy Wingo]

Hi Noah,

On Sun 30 Jan 2011 17:08, Noah Lavine <noah.b.lavine@gmail.com> writes:

> My question is, what should I do to let other Scheme variants know
> this is happening and get them involved?

C.L.S, currently.  It could be that there is a need for another forum,
but I don't know.

What tends to happen is that people that want to do this consider
themselves Scheme programmers, first and foremost, and who do not
identify themselves with one Scheme system; so they release their code
on their own site, with info on using it with various systems, and send
mails to the various implementation user lists.

But it's rare for an implementer to be in this category.  People who
have the luxury of an implementation, if it's big enough, don't appear
to _need_ standardization so much, so they don't work on it.

> I could just post on a bunch of development mailing lists, but it
> seemed like it would be better to have one list that handled that
> (although maybe not).

Scheme is fairly polychromatic right now, culturally.  You might find it
useful to interact with the various lists individually, and then come
back and work on this.  Otherwise you won't really know where people are
coming from.

For example, if you are interested in cooperation with Racket, the (very
smart and experienced) Racket people will tell you their view of the
world straight-up on their mailing lists, but are probably tired of
getting into arguments with other worldviews on more general fora.
Likewise you'd need something in R6RS for R6RS schemes.  Et cetera.

I don't mean to discourage more inter-Scheme cooperation.  I like Scheme
folks and Scheme implementations.  I even like Racket :)  I just mean to
say that it's not just space, or lack thereof, that is a barrier to
cooperation, it's culture.  Successful cooperation is diplomacy, in the
best sense of the word.

Regards,

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: Scheme Implementers

[Noah Lavine]

Hello,

> What tends to happen is that people that want to do this consider
> themselves Scheme programmers, first and foremost, and who do not
> identify themselves with one Scheme system; so they release their code
> on their own site, with info on using it with various systems, and send
> mails to the various implementation user lists.
>
> But it's rare for an implementer to be in this category.  People who
> have the luxury of an implementation, if it's big enough, don't appear
> to _need_ standardization so much, so they don't work on it.

Thanks for this reply. That makes sense.

> Scheme is fairly polychromatic right now, culturally.  You might find it
> useful to interact with the various lists individually, and then come
> back and work on this.  Otherwise you won't really know where people are
> coming from.
>
> For example, if you are interested in cooperation with Racket, the (very
> smart and experienced) Racket people will tell you their view of the
> world straight-up on their mailing lists, but are probably tired of
> getting into arguments with other worldviews on more general fora.
> Likewise you'd need something in R6RS for R6RS schemes.  Et cetera.
>
> I don't mean to discourage more inter-Scheme cooperation.  I like Scheme
> folks and Scheme implementations.  I even like Racket :)  I just mean to
> say that it's not just space, or lack thereof, that is a barrier to
> cooperation, it's culture.  Successful cooperation is diplomacy, in the
> best sense of the word.

Thanks, this makes a lot more sense to me. I might get in touch with
Racket or some other Schemes once the parser is far enough along to be
used.

Noah