Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Pierre Bernatchez]

I'm hoping to find out something about the true status
of the guile project.

To put things in perspective, I love the idea of guile and I think
there was no better choice than scheme for the language to use.
The potential benefits of a community of (hopefully GP L) developers 
supporting guile is huge.

So my question is this:

Since Guile seems to have reached a certain initial level of
maturity as a project, where can I find evidence of a thriving,
or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?

At first glance one gets the impression that the project is
floundering for lack of a community.
What is the true status of the guile project?


Sorry for posting to both lists, there doesn't seem to be
much activity on either and I am trying to reach as many
guile aware people as I can.

I would suggest you post follow ups only to the guile-user list.





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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Richard Todd]

Pierre Bernatchez wrote:
> Since Guile seems to have reached a certain initial level of
> maturity as a project, where can I find evidence of a thriving,
> or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?

I agree with you that guile usage does not seem to be taking off.  I can 
give you my opinion, as someone who's watched guile on and off for a 
couple years.

I personally think guile (like scheme itself) is missing a standard 
library.  With perl and python, I have access to a wide variety of 
documented and standardized modules for any number of tasks right 'out 
of the box'.  At the moment, I'll choose one of them over guile every 
time if I need to get an application done on a timeline.

Some of it is psychological, too.  The guile projects list has many 
projects that 'froze' at version 0.3 in 2001, and many dead links.  It 
gives people investigating guile the impression that guile itself is 
dead.  I know that's what I thought, anyway.

I do like scheme a lot, though, and have recently decided to start 
contributing.  The number one thing I think we can do is start adding 
useful, documented, and (./configure && make install)'able modules to 
the project.  It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, since the easiest 
way to build a library that attracts active users is to _have_ active 
users contributing!

I wonder if it would help if I set up a place to collect stable guile 
modules, and manage the namespace so the module names and public 
function names are consistent?  It would be downloadable in a single 
tarball, with texinfo documentation, etc.  Projects from the project 
list would get promoted into the standard library as they stabilized. 
Broken projects that are no longer maintained would eventually be 
deprecated and dropped if no maintainer came forward.

People looking for a weekend project could pick a python or perl module, 
implement it in guile, and contribute it.  I don't think it would take 
long to build an impressive foundation for people who might try doing 
real work in the language.  I have a few more thoughts on how the 
library project would get to 1.0, but that can wait.

I was thinking about proposing this in January after my BASIC translator 
is feature-complete, but your mail prompted me to mention it now.  If 
this isn't something existing guile users would be interested in, I'd 
like to know asap so I can choose something else to focus on.

Richard Todd
http://www.vzavenue.net/~rwtodd5128/index.html




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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Marco Parrone (marc0)]

Richard Todd on Sun, 21 Dec 2003 13:58:32 -0600 writes:

> Pierre Bernatchez wrote:
>> Since Guile seems to have reached a certain initial level of
>> maturity as a project, where can I find evidence of a thriving,
>> or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?
>
> I agree with you that guile usage does not seem to be taking off.  I
> can give you my opinion, as someone who's watched guile on and off for
> a couple years.
>
> I personally think guile (like scheme itself) is missing a standard
> library.  With perl and python, I have access to a wide variety of
> documented and standardized modules for any number of tasks right 'out
> of the box'.  At the moment, I'll choose one of them over guile every
> time if I need to get an application done on a timeline.

IMHO what is missing is code to use, libraries, IMHO it's not worthy
the fact that it is standardized or not.

IMHO an integration/compatibility with Emacs will be a great thing.

For example I'm developing a mail-to-news
(http://www.nongnu.org/mail-to-news) gateway in Guile Scheme, and I'm
finding myself implemeting almost only things already implemented in
Emacs, and now I'm considering rewriting the program in Elisp - thing
that I think will take much less time than finishing it in Guile
Scheme.  As both Guile Scheme and Emacs Lisp are good languages, I can
not justify myself the work required to duplicate the efforts.

> I wonder if it would help if I set up a place to collect stable guile
> modules, and manage the namespace so the module names and public
> function names are consistent?  It would be downloadable in a single
> tarball, with texinfo documentation, etc.  Projects from the project
> list would get promoted into the standard library as they
> stabilized. Broken projects that are no longer maintained would
> eventually be deprecated and dropped if no maintainer came forward.

I think it would be a good thing to have an unofficial colletion of
libraries, specially if hosted on Savannah using CVS, so to make it
easier to share little modules too (using N projects and N webpages
and N CVS and making N packages for N very small (< 300 LOC) modules
is not very attractive).

I'm doing something similar with the (young/unstable) emhacks project
(http://www.nongnu.org/emhacks).

-- 
Marco Parrone (marc0) - marc0@autistici.org
2143 9E77 D5E6 115A 48AD  A170 D0EE F736 (4E88 99C2)



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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Richard Todd]

Marco Parrone (marc0) wrote:
> IMHO what is missing is code to use, libraries, IMHO it's not worthy
> the fact that it is standardized or not.

Well, the reason to get them organized and collected is so that you can 
write new guile code and just assume that users will have the modules 
you depend on.  If you depend on lots of independent libraries, with 
varying standards for documentation, packaging, backwards-compatibility, 
and installation, then many would-be users will pass you by.  Not to 
mention the fact that, based on the guile projects web page, sites with 
interesting-sounding guile code have a habit of disappearing.


> For example I'm developing a mail-to-news
> (http://www.nongnu.org/mail-to-news) gateway in Guile Scheme, and I'm
> finding myself implemeting almost only things already implemented in
> Emacs, and now I'm considering rewriting the program in Elisp - thing
> that I think will take much less time than finishing it in Guile
> Scheme.  As both Guile Scheme and Emacs Lisp are good languages, I can
> not justify myself the work required to duplicate the efforts.

In terms of guile, I would think the best thing to do is finish it in 
scheme, and release all the Emacs-like functionality separately in the 
form of re-usable modules.  That way, you will be the last person who 
has to go through this pain.  IMHO, efforts like that will gain the 
project the momentum it needs to grow a community of users like the OP 
was asking for.  The library project I'm proposing would give those 
modules a place to live, get them into the hands of guile users, and 
guarantee certain standards of quality and consistency.

Richard Todd




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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "marc0" == Marco Parrone (marc0) <marc0@autistici.org> writes:

Hi Marco,

    marc0> IMHO an integration/compatibility with Emacs will be a
    marc0> great thing.

This can mean several things, but there's work going on (slowly) on
all of them.  Guile CVS has an Elisp language translator, but which
lacks most of the editing-related primitives provided by the Emacs C
code.  Ken Raeburn, OTOH, is working on Guilifying the Emacs C
codebase, which would provide those primitives to Guile.  Guile CVS
also has several Emacs libraries that aim to make working with Guile
in Emacs easier.

    marc0> For example I'm developing a mail-to-news
    marc0> (http://www.nongnu.org/mail-to-news) gateway in Guile
    marc0> Scheme, and I'm finding myself implemeting almost only
    marc0> things already implemented in Emacs, and now I'm
    marc0> considering rewriting the program in Elisp - thing that I
    marc0> think will take much less time than finishing it in Guile
    marc0> Scheme.  As both Guile Scheme and Emacs Lisp are good
    marc0> languages, I can not justify myself the work required to
    marc0> duplicate the efforts.

If your use of Elisp would be for the language, rather than for the
editing primitives, then the translator in Guile CVS might suffice to
run an Elisp implementation of your program through Guile.

Regards,
        Neil



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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[a.rottmann]

Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:

> Ken Raeburn, OTOH, is working on Guilifying the Emacs C
> codebase, which would provide those primitives to Guile.  Guile CVS
> also has several Emacs libraries that aim to make working with Guile
> in Emacs easier.
> 
Hmm, is there some more up to date info available on this project?

Gtx, Andy
-- 
Andreas Rottmann         | Rotty@ICQ      | 118634484@ICQ | a.rottmann@gmx.at
http://www.8ung.at/rotty | GnuPG Key: http://www.8ung.at/rotty/gpg.asc
Fingerprint              | DFB4 4EB4 78A4 5EEE 6219  F228 F92F CFC5 01FD 5B62

Python is executable pseudocode, Perl is executable line-noise.




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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "andy" == a rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at> writes:

    andy> Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:
    >> Ken Raeburn, OTOH, is working on Guilifying the Emacs C
    >> codebase, which would provide those primitives to Guile.  Guile CVS
    >> also has several Emacs libraries that aim to make working with Guile
    >> in Emacs easier.
    >> 
    andy> Hmm, is there some more up to date info available on this
    andy> project?

Which one - Ken's?  The last status I'm aware of was on this list
several months ago - should be findable in the archive.  For further
news I recommend emailing Ken.

        Neil



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ice-9

[Brian S McQueen]

What does ice-9 stand for?  What is it? Where did it come from?

Brian McQueen


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Re: ice-9

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Brian S McQueen <bqueen@nas.nasa.gov>
   Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 08:45:27 -0800 (PST)

   [ice-9?]

vonnegut.

you feel a great thirst, now.

thi


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Re: ice-9

[Tom Lord]

    > From: Brian S McQueen <bqueen@nas.nasa.gov>

    > What does ice-9 stand for?  What is it? Where did it come from?

It comes from a book by Kurt Vonnegut called "Cat's Cradle".

Cat's cradle, if you haven't heard of it, is the name of a game two
children can play with a loop of string.   You start by looping it
over the fingers of either hand (in, roughly, a simple "oval"
configuration) and then pass it back and forth, with each pass adding
additional complexity to the looping structure (more and more
crossings of the string) until things are so tangled that no further
progress is possible.  For some reason, this is considered fun.

Ice-9, as I recall (it's been a while since I read it), is the name of
a fictional (knock on wood) discovery made in the context of some
comperable children's games (scientific research, international
politics and war, religion, etc.). It's a crystaline form of water
which is solid at room temperature.  Drop a seed crystal into a glass
of water and the contents of the glass rapidly solidify.  You'd have
to stick it in an oven to get back to liquid state.  Hey, keep that
stuff away from my well!

"Solid at a wide range of temperatures" and "rapidly growing seed
crystal" might give you some idea of the free associating that led me
to pick the name.  In retrospect, perhaps it was an ironic choice? :-)

-t



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Emacs and Guile status (was Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?)

[Ken Raeburn]

Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:

>>>>>> "andy" == a rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at> writes:
>
>     andy> Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:
>     >> Ken Raeburn, OTOH, is working on Guilifying the Emacs C
>     >> codebase, which would provide those primitives to Guile.  Guile CVS
>     >> also has several Emacs libraries that aim to make working with Guile
>     >> in Emacs easier.
>     >> 
>     andy> Hmm, is there some more up to date info available on this
>     andy> project?
>
> Which one - Ken's?  The last status I'm aware of was on this list
> several months ago - should be findable in the archive.  For further
> news I recommend emailing Ken.

I must apologize -- I've been stalled on this for at least a year.  I
got swamped at work, and this isn't exactly an easy project to work on
in a few spare minutes, so I didn't get back to it for a while, and
then a while longer, and so on.  Other, smaller projects started to
take up some of my time.  But I've been wanting for a while now to put
together the time to start up on this again.

My last work -- and soon, I hope, continuing -- was on the Emacs code
base, banging on various low-level macros and such to try to reduce
the dependence of the bulk of the Emacs code on the details of the
Lisp object implementations.  (For example, don't fetch the struct
window pointer from an object before checking that it is in fact a
window object, even though it "works" in the current implementation.
Don't make so many assumptions about which Lisp object references can
be treated as lvalues and assigned to.  Pass around Lisp objects and
get the struct pointers out of them, rather than assuming you can
trivially reconstruct the Lisp object handle from the struct pointer.)
That was the big, fairly pervasive thing I found I needed to do when I
first got a proof-of-concept hacked up version up and limping along;
to make the changes acceptable for inclusion in Emacs, they're being
redone more cleanly, and in smaller pieces.  Some string macros here,
now some lvalue/rvalue hacks over there, etc.  It's got a ways to go.
I forget, I think I was looking at the interval handling most
recently.

There was a bit of push-back from some of the Emacs developers, too.
Some "Guile compatibility might be nice, but no way are we going to
even consider replacing the working Lisp engine" (something I'm merely
hoping to defer any decisions or arguments on for a while), some "what
a waste of effort, nobody cares about Guile or Scheme" type attitudes,
"don't fix what ain't broke", etc.  Others, including RMS, do seem to
want at least the Guile compatibility.  (Well, unless things have
changed in the past year or so.)

I need to spend a little time getting back up to speed on the state of
things in the Emacs development world, but I'm hoping to pick up this
work again soon.  No reason other people can't help out with it too,
though....

Ken


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Re: Emacs and Guile status (was Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?)

[Tim Johnson]

* Ken Raeburn <raeburn@raeburn.org> [040101 14:14]:
> 
> There was a bit of push-back from some of the Emacs developers, too.
> Some "Guile compatibility might be nice, but no way are we going to
> even consider replacing the working Lisp engine" (something I'm merely
> hoping to defer any decisions or arguments on for a while), some "what
> a waste of effort, nobody cares about Guile or Scheme" type attitudes,
> "don't fix what ain't broke", etc.  Others, including RMS, do seem to
> want at least the Guile compatibility.  (Well, unless things have
> changed in the past year or so.)
> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-user

  My observations aren't backed by direct experience, since I am just
  beginning to learn to use xemacs, elisp, and especially scheme/guile.
  However, what I have observed and been told, is that the fracture
  between the GNU Emacs and Xemacs community has been in part paved over
  by those who are trying to address differences in implementation,
  and (hopefully) learn from each other's implementation.

  I'm glad to see that RMS is favorable about this, that must be the
  biggest hurdle. I'm quoting below from /elisp_4.html#SEC7 of the GNU
  Emacs Lisp Reference:

  " Emacs Lisp is not at all influenced by Scheme; but the GNU project has
    an implementation of Scheme, called Guile. We use Guile in all new GNU
    software that calls for extensibility. 
  "
  That's RMS speaking, I presume.

  tim

-- 
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      http://www.alaska-internet-solutions.com


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Re: Emacs and Guile status (was Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?)

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Ken" == Ken Raeburn <raeburn@raeburn.org> writes:

    Ken> There was a bit of push-back from some of the Emacs developers, too.
    Ken> Some "Guile compatibility might be nice, but no way are we going to
    Ken> even consider replacing the working Lisp engine" (something I'm merely
    Ken> hoping to defer any decisions or arguments on for a while), some "what
    Ken> a waste of effort, nobody cares about Guile or Scheme" type attitudes,
    Ken> "don't fix what ain't broke", etc.  Others, including RMS, do seem to
    Ken> want at least the Guile compatibility.  (Well, unless things have
    Ken> changed in the past year or so.)

This seems to mix up 2 issues that I would think could be easily
disentangled.

1. A hypothetical future switchover from Elisp to Guile engine, for
   the core Emacs distribution.

It should be obvious that this is nowhere in sight yet, I would think.

2. Macro work on the Emacs codebase to allow intrepid individuals to
   play with using the Guile engine in Emacs, with negligible impact
   on core usage of the Elisp engine.

It should be an executive decision - presumably RMS's - whether this
is a Good Thing or not.  RMS should make his view clear and public,
and then other Emacs developers should stop carping.

    Ken> I need to spend a little time getting back up to speed on the state of
    Ken> things in the Emacs development world, but I'm hoping to pick up this
    Ken> work again soon.  No reason other people can't help out with it too,
    Ken> though....

How would one start to get involved here?  (Not that I have any time
myself, but perhaps the answer is useful for someone else.)

        Neil



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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Todd <richardt@vzavenue.net> writes:

    Richard> I wonder if it would help if I set up a place to collect
    Richard> stable guile modules, and manage the namespace so the
    Richard> module names and public function names are consistent?
    Richard> It would be downloadable in a single tarball, with
    Richard> texinfo documentation, etc.  Projects from the project
    Richard> list would get promoted into the standard library as they
    Richard> stabilized. Broken projects that are no longer maintained
    Richard> would eventually be deprecated and dropped if no
    Richard> maintainer came forward.

This sounds like a great idea - best wishes with it!

(Two unimportant notes:

 1. It may involve some ideas previously discussed under the name of
    "GUMM", but I shouldn't worry too much about that - what we really
    need is for someone to just _do_ something, that can then be
    incrementally refined with usage.

 2. I'd hope that it doesn't stay downloadable as a single tarball for
    long!)

Regards,
        Neil



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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Richard Todd]

Neil Jerram wrote:
>  1. It may involve some ideas previously discussed under the name of
>     "GUMM", but I shouldn't worry too much about that - what we really
>     need is for someone to just _do_ something, that can then be
>     incrementally refined with usage.

I agree, and have already started to a degree.  I've been making guile 
ports of modules from perl and python that I find useful.  I posted 
ansi-color last night in an attempt to show that it can be pretty easy 
to do.  In early January, I'll set up a project on Savannah for the project.

I'll also be contacting authors of modules I'd like to pull in over the 
next couple weeks, but there could be lots of good code that I don't 
know about.  So, the best thing people wanting to help in the near term 
can do is:
   1) point me to modules that you think should be incorporated
   2) implement modules that don't exist, but should be incorporated.
      (Many of these don't take much time; It's just work that has yet to
       be done.)

I'm just going to throw a start at it on the server, and get a mailing 
list started so we can hash out things like how the modules should be 
organized, how we want to manage releases and backwards compatibility, etc.

I'd like to have a 1.0-type release in 6 months (because June 1 is my 
birthday...I've worked in software too long to believe in estimating 
coding work!)  This would mean that we are stable with respect to how we 
want the project to run, and have some initial set of modules 
incorporated and documented.  After that it should be just add, add, 
add, release 1.2, add, add, etc.

Richard Todd





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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Robert Uhl]

Richard Todd <richardt@vzavenue.net> writes:
> 
> I do like scheme a lot, though, and have recently decided to start
> contributing.

I'd _love_ to contribute.  My big thing was that I wished to make
number->string be sane (i.e. handle non-decimal fractions, particularly
12).  The problem is that the code in question is a right royal b*tch to
decypher.  Maybe someday...

-- 
Robert Uhl <ruhl@4dv.net>
The story includes this array of huge rhymes-with-hell machines, all running
screensavers, the power and SAN cables neatly run between them... and the
disused tape-storage closet stuffed with old Sun boxen still humming quietly
away.                --adb on rumours of a flawless SunOS to NT site cutover


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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Pierre" == Pierre Bernatchez <pbz@ogopogo.biz> writes:

    Pierre> Since Guile seems to have reached a certain initial level of
    Pierre> maturity as a project, where can I find evidence of a thriving,
    Pierre> or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?

Hi Pierre,

Interesting question.  I don't have an easy answer, but to me it begs
the question of what you have in mind as evidence of the community
that you are looking for?

Regards,
        Neil



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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Pierre Bernatchez]

Neil Jerram wrote:

>>>>>>"Pierre" == Pierre Bernatchez <pbz@ogopogo.biz> writes:
>     Pierre> maturity as a project, where can I find evidence of a thriving,
>     Pierre> or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?
> 
> Hi Pierre,
> 
> Interesting question.  I don't have an easy answer, but to me it begs
> the question of what you have in mind as evidence of the community
> that you are looking for?
Hi Neil,

For something like this to stay alive, it needs a community of interest
around it.  People who rely on the core project for other projects that 
depend on it,  people who are interested in the core project itself,
people who are interesting in bringing innovation to the core project,
people who are interesting in extending the common base of functionality 
by working cooperatively to develop a suite of library modules,
people who value the community as a potential market, develop training, 
books etc.  I could go on and on (er... i already have sorry.. )

What I'm getting at, is that it takes a community to breathe life
into base technology project like this. When that happens,
it takes off and flies and everybody benefits.

Either you have a community, or you're on the way to having one,
or you're part of a sunset project.

So if there is an existing or emerging community of interest,
Where do they talk to each other?
Where is their traffic?
Is this list the right place to be talking to that community?
If not where is the right place?

This is not a criticism, I'm just trying to find out
the status quo.








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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Pierre Bernatchez <pbz@ogopogo.biz>
   Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 12:04:23 -0500

   where can I find evidence of a thriving,
   or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?

guile users are all programmers, but some programmers are more
equal than others (to paraphrase orwell).  this leads to...

   At first glance one gets the impression that the project is
   floundering for lack of a community.
   What is the true status of the guile project?

... a state where truth is irrelevant.  you can be a benjamin or
you can be a boxer, or you can fly ciphers like the crows to where
the coyote king dreams.

thi


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Re: Guile is a great idea, but where's the community?

[Thamer Al-Harbash]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Pierre Bernatchez wrote:

> Since Guile seems to have reached a certain initial level of
> maturity as a project, where can I find evidence of a thriving,
> or at least an emerging community of guile users and developers?

OK, here's my guile success story.

I started using guile on a pet project. It's a DHCP suite. The
suite currently ships with a client and a sniffer:

http://dhcp-agent.sf.net/

Unfortunately, thanks to busy work, I had to leave the project in
stasis since the summer. I plan to get back now that the holidays
are nearing.

Traditionally DHCP clients executed shell scripts to setup the
host system. This is kludgy, a result of at least one security
hole, and a shell script cannot talk back to the client much.

With guile and dhcp-agent the user uses the hooks system to
implement hooks per DHCP option. All the options are passed as
strings or a list of strings making it very hard to insecurely
handle a DHCP option.  Finally, and this is the most important
feature, a user is able to call routines in the client from the
scheme script. For example, it is possible to ask the client to
check the latency of a list of IP addresses. With a shell script
such a callback would not be possible.

In other news I've successfully used guile at work for its the
numerical tower and its abritrarily large numbers. It makes
crunching numbers painless and safe.

I think guile is alive and well. The only real issue is
documentation, and that's being generously solved by additional
volunteers. I'm hoping to make time myself to contribute more.

-- 
Thamer Al-Harbash
GPG Key fingerprint: D7F3 1E3B F329 8DD5 FAE3  03B1 A663 E359 D686 AA1F


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Guile/Scheme development

[Brian S McQueen]

I thought I would mention how I am currently using Guile, and mention a
Guile project I would like to undertake over the next year.  I think this
is appropriate because there are probably many, like myself, who have
found Guile very useful and are putting it to work, though they may not
have any involvement with the Guile community.  Folks in this category are
hoping or assuming someone else is maintaining or advancing the core
libguile technology, because it is a great tool.  We can't all be masters
of the libguile core.

If we want Guile to suceed we have to put it to work. An excellent example
of a guy who is really putting this technology to work is Bruce Korb,
creator of Autogen http://www.gnu.org/software/autogen/).  From his web
site you can see he is very productive.

 Recently I revised all the CGI's on my company's web site by adding Guile
(linking in libguile).  I was able to remove all logic from the CGIs,
leaving them as a batch of C functions, the order and operation of which
is specified by external config files written entirely in Scheme.  Now the
CGIs are very adjustable, but the core is still a batch of high
performance C executables.

I also entirely separated the UI of the web site from the logic via Guile.
The CGIs actually produce only name=value pairs as output.  This output is
then put into Bruce's tool to produce the output html.  This tool I must
recommend to you all.

The future project I would like to undertake in the next year is to
produce a version of Autogen which will run as a Server, listening for
connections, accepting data from clients and returning fully interpolated
templates.  There are a few different approaches.  I haven't decided which
way to ge here yet.

McQueen


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Re: Guile/Scheme development

[Bruce Korb]

Brian S McQueen wrote:
> 
> I thought I would mention how I am currently using Guile, and mention a
> Guile project I would like to undertake over the next year.  I think this
> is appropriate because there are probably many, like myself, who have
> found Guile very useful and are putting it to work, though they may not
> have any involvement with the Guile community.  Folks in this category are
> hoping or assuming someone else is maintaining or advancing the core
> libguile technology, because it is a great tool.  We can't all be masters
> of the libguile core.
> 
> If we want Guile to suceed we have to put it to work. An excellent example
> of a guy who is really putting this technology to work is Bruce Korb,
> creator of Autogen http://www.gnu.org/software/autogen/).  From his web
> site you can see he is very productive.

Either very productive, or he's been plugging away at it for a really long time.

>  Recently I revised all the CGI's on my company's web site by adding Guile
> (linking in libguile).  I was able to remove all logic from the CGIs,
> leaving them as a batch of C functions, the order and operation of which
> is specified by external config files written entirely in Scheme.  Now the
> CGIs are very adjustable, but the core is still a batch of high
> performance C executables.
> 
> I also entirely separated the UI of the web site from the logic via Guile.
> The CGIs actually produce only name=value pairs as output.  This output is
> then put into Bruce's tool to produce the output html.  This tool I must
> recommend to you all.

Thanks.  :-)

> The future project I would like to undertake in the next year is to
> produce a version of Autogen which will run as a Server, listening for
> connections, accepting data from clients and returning fully interpolated
> templates.  There are a few different approaches.  I haven't decided which
> way to get there yet.

I think you'll find the simplest would be to fork off a child process
to do the work.  Any other approach will have one of two problems:

1.  memory leaks.  Names of things sometimes get allocated and sometimes
    are passed in and sometimes come from template or definition sources.
    Since these were generally kept until template processing was complete
    and the program then exited, I did little to keep track of which
    needed deallocation.

2.  A development headache of finding and tracking all these little allocations.
    This might be accomplished with wrappers around the collection of
    allocation and deallocation routines, but chasing all that stuff down
    doesn't look like a pleasant task to me.  Even less pleasant if there
    are some allocations that really do need to be permanent.

All in all, I'd say just fork a child and let process management clean up.


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Re: Guile/Scheme development

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

   From: Brian S McQueen <bqueen@nas.nasa.gov>
   Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 11:04:48 -0800 (PST)

   There are a few different approaches.  I haven't decided which
   way to ge here yet.

cgi <-> daemon is how wikid is implemented.  source in dir:

 http://www.glug.org/people/ttn/software/wikid/

demo instance available in link from dir:

 http://www.glug.org/wiki/

i just checked, it's still running (last restart: 2003-10-18).

thi


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