Re: Exceptions

[Vorfeed Canal <vorfeed.canal@gmail.com>]

On 9/27/05, Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@laas.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Vorfeed Canal <vorfeed.canal@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > But what about GUILE extensions written in C ? Lack of sane
> > place to put C glue libraries bothers me.
>
> Extension libraries written in C can also be thought of as actual
> libraries (for example, they may export C functions that wrap/unwrap
> Scheme objects, or a C version of their Scheme API, etc.).  As such,
> they deserve to be in the usual place for libraries.
>
1. Not really:
  A. They are usually useless for programs not linked to guile - and
such programs will know where to find them anyway since libguile will
know this.
  B. If program A is linked to libguile.so.12 (guile 1.6.7) while
program B is linked to libguile.so.16 (guile 1.7.2) they'll need
DIFFERENT versions of such libraries - and this is somewhat
problematic with libtool.
  C. While it's true "these libraries can do this and they can do
that" in almost 100% cases today they just export some functions for
scheme level.
2. You can not install them "in the usual place" anyway:

$ ./configure --prefix=/somewhere/there ; make ; make install
$ /somewhere/there/bin/guile -e '(use-modules (ice-9 readline))'
ERROR: In procedure dynamic-link:
ERROR: file: "libguilereadline-v-16", message:
"libguilereadline-v-16.so: cannot open shared object file: No such
file or directory"

Oops ?

> > Not since this is such a big
> > issue - it's minor issue.And THAT is reason it's bothering me: why
> > project with over 8 years history STILL has such minor basic issues
> > unresolved ? Are there are developers who can support GUILE or is it
> > semi-abandoned project like HURD ?
>
> Maybe you misunderstood the issues?
>
I did not. Right now it's IMPOSSIBLE to install two versions of guile
at all - let alone in the sane way
(/usr/bin/guile-{1.6,1.7},/usr/lib/guile-{1.6,1.7},/usr/share/guile-{1.6,1.7}
so I can not see how guile development is done in first place (it's
standard practice to have 3-4 different versions of program while it's
in developmet and guile does not work this way at all - and even if
you'll fix guile itself third-party extensions will not obey your
decision).

> BTW, you should really try GNU/Hurd on your box before complaining.

I've tried it few years ago and back then it was not really usable:
was not able to even work with 10GiB partition. Today... It does not
even detect my SATA HDD in my NForce4-based system. May be I've used
too old version, of course... or did something wrong. Plus AFAIK even
today it's still "not recommended for production use" - after >10
years of development and I'm not really interested in OS development
(or for that matter GUILE development): I want something that WORKS.
NOW. It's Ok if I need to spend some time with tuning/fixing, but not
YEARS, sorry.


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