Re: [Swig-user] swig guile2

[William S Fulton <wsf@fultondesigns.co.uk>]

On 22/03/11 08:16, Tristan Colgate wrote:
> On 21 March 2011 20:32, William S Fulton<wsf@fultondesigns.co.uk>  wrote:
>
>> Are you proposing a 2nd SWIG Guile module in addition to the current module?
>
>    The code as it stands is exactly that, a new module. I have worked
> under the assumption that breaking the existing guile support was
> taboo.
>
>> I am no guile user, so can't help on the Guile side. The guile SWIG module
>> is suffering neglect and doesn't seem to work with modern versions of Guile
>> - the test-suite fails for me. Only very rarely are there Guile queries on
>> the SWIG mailing list, so suspect it isn't used much. Would it make sense to
>> drop the older Guile interface altogether and just use Guile 2?
>
>    The existing guile module support the gh_ interface and the older
> version of the SCM interface. It also doesn't work with guiles current
> GC. It's entirely useless for the current version of guile. I had
> assumed that since SWIG still ships it, enough people care about
> legacy guile support to not want it broken.
>
>    I've only just started looking into getting the test-suite working
> with my guile2 work, but I do intend on getting it to the point where
> it all passes.
>
If it all passes, it will then be good enough to commit to trunk and to 
be included in future SWIG releases. Please discuss on swig-devel if you 
get to this stage.

>    For me personally, the old guile module is no longer useful.
> However, guile 2.0 is not widely deployed in distributions yet and
> that may take some time.
>
>> BTW, there
>> is the swig -scm option for guile 1.6+. So there seems to be GH and SCM and
>> now guile 2 API... does that sound right that there are so many C interfaces
>> or is your Guile 2 interface just SCM?
>
>    The -scm support works by mapping the old SCM interface to the GH
> interface.. Almost all the scm_ calls used by the existing guile
> module are deprecated. I tried implementing and -scm2 option within
> the existing module but it was more awkward than I could bare.
>
>    I'm not sure that there is going to be enormous support for this
> within the guile community either really. Guile 2 ships with a new FFI
> and using that is, obviosuly, of more interest to them. I've struggled
> wrapping legacy APIs with it though and SWIG really is rather good.
>
Well if you get the new version up to scratch perhaps SWIG could just 
support Guile 2 and later unless someone really objects. The older Guile 
would then require earlier versions of SWIG.

William