2.2 git users should switch to stable-2.2 branch

2.2 git users should switch to stable-2.2 branch

[Andy Wingo]

Hello Guilefolk,

As we did with Guile 1.8 and 2.0, I just pushed a stable-2.2 branch.
This is the branch for Guile 2.2 development -- the branch that keeps
a stable API and ABI during the 2.2.x series.  It's the one you want to
be using unless you are doing development of Guile itself.

If you have a checkout of Guile master, probably right now you want to
do this:

  git fetch
  git checkout stable-2.2

Assuming your default remote is the Guile repo, that will fetch the new
stable-2.2 branch from git.sv.gnu.org, and then the "checkout" command
will check out a new branch locally to track upstream stable-2.2.

As far as a roadmap goes... I suspect the next Guile stable series will
be 3.0 and I suspect it will feature ahead-of-time compilation to
machine code instead of bytecode.  I think there will still be a
bytecode backend as well for targets that are missing the machine code
backend.  Here are some thoughts:

  https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/02/04/guile-compiler-tasks

I will probably start within the next month or three on "instruction
explosion"; see that blog post for details.  It's like Abdulaziz
Ghoulum's "incremental approach to compiler development", except
completely in reverse :P

Farther on I would expect a 3.0 after about 2 years or so.  There are
many things to do.  If someone is interested in taking a task, that blog
post has many ideas that are still valid.

Incidentally if you use Guile commercially and would like to support my
work on it, let me know.  My employer Igalia continues to be happy with
me working on it a day or two a week, and I work on it as a hobby
additionally, but it would be nice to be able to devote all of my
attention on Guile, at least for consecutive periods of a month or two
so I can work on whole features.  I expect a general perf improvement
for Guile 3.0 of about 4x relative to Guile 2.2, and with support, this
can become reality sooner.  There are lots of details of course but if
this is something that interests you, let's talk.

Happy hacking, and don't forget to switch your Guile git branches!

Andy

Re: 2.2 git users should switch to stable-2.2 branch

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Andy Wingo writes:

> Hello Guilefolk,
>
> As we did with Guile 1.8 and 2.0, I just pushed a stable-2.2 branch.
> This is the branch for Guile 2.2 development -- the branch that keeps
> a stable API and ABI during the 2.2.x series.  It's the one you want to
> be using unless you are doing development of Guile itself.
>
> If you have a checkout of Guile master, probably right now you want to
> do this:
>
>   git fetch
>   git checkout stable-2.2
>
> Assuming your default remote is the Guile repo, that will fetch the new
> stable-2.2 branch from git.sv.gnu.org, and then the "checkout" command
> will check out a new branch locally to track upstream stable-2.2.
>
> As far as a roadmap goes... I suspect the next Guile stable series will
> be 3.0 and I suspect it will feature ahead-of-time compilation to
> machine code instead of bytecode.  I think there will still be a
> bytecode backend as well for targets that are missing the machine code
> backend.  Here are some thoughts:
>
>   https://wingolog.org/archives/2016/02/04/guile-compiler-tasks
>
> I will probably start within the next month or three on "instruction
> explosion"; see that blog post for details.  It's like Abdulaziz
> Ghoulum's "incremental approach to compiler development", except
> completely in reverse :P

This is really exciting!

> Farther on I would expect a 3.0 after about 2 years or so.  There are
> many things to do.  If someone is interested in taking a task, that blog
> post has many ideas that are still valid.

I hope, eventually, I will be in the right time and place to be helpful
on this.

> Incidentally if you use Guile commercially and would like to support my
> work on it, let me know.  My employer Igalia continues to be happy with
> me working on it a day or two a week, and I work on it as a hobby
> additionally, but it would be nice to be able to devote all of my
> attention on Guile, at least for consecutive periods of a month or two
> so I can work on whole features.  I expect a general perf improvement
> for Guile 3.0 of about 4x relative to Guile 2.2, and with support, this
> can become reality sooner.  There are lots of details of course but if
> this is something that interests you, let's talk.
>
> Happy hacking, and don't forget to switch your Guile git branches!
>
> Andy

I don't know what the right answer is to it (maybe eventually there
would be a company making money off of Guix deployment that can manage
to pay for full-time Guile work) but obviously this would be nice to see
happen.

Thank you for all your leadership and hacking in Guile-land!  We
love/appreciate it!

Re: 2.2 git users should switch to stable-2.2 branch

[Andy Wingo]

On Thu 11 May 2017 21:54, Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

>> Incidentally if you use Guile commercially and would like to support my
>> work on it, let me know.
>
> I don't know what the right answer is to it (maybe eventually there
> would be a company making money off of Guix deployment that can manage
> to pay for full-time Guile work) but obviously this would be nice to see
> happen.

I think there's room for lots of organizations :) Commercially I see the
value as being in niches that can apply technology from the Guile
universe to problems people have.  We can (and should!) spread the
gospel of Scheme but that only gets you so far; my feeling is that
successful guile-hacking orgs will have a touch with some market need
beyond consultancy on Guile itself.  In that regard too that niche
relationship can exist in many different Guile-hacking orgs; a central
"GuileCo" doesn't seem likely to me.  Dunno tho :)

I personally don't see the "finish line" of a full-time Guile gig in
sight (yet?), so I am not going to put an extraordinary sprint of effort
into that side of things right now; Guile is still a side gig for me at
this point.  It's one which I'd be happy to expand of course but not
something on which to gamble the rent :)

Happy hacking,

Andy