Guildhall users: please update your GUILE_LOAD_PATH or %load-path

Guildhall users: please update your GUILE_LOAD_PATH or %load-path

[Mark H Weaver]

Hello all,

In the future it will be important for Guildhall modules to have a lower
priority than in the search path than Guile's core modules.  The reason
is that Guildhall has several portable SRFIs, some of which will be
superceded by efficient native implementations in core Guile.  One such
example is SRFI-41, which will soon be replaced by a superior version in
Guile core.

There are two ways to arrange for Guildhall's directory to have a lower
priority than Guile's core modules:

* If you added Guildhall's directory to the GUILE_LOAD_PATH environment
  variable, then make sure "/home/USERNAME/.local/share/guile/site/2.0"
  comes last, and add a special dummy path component composed of three
  dots (...) immediately before it.  For example:

    GUILE_LOAD_PATH=...:/home/<USER>/.local/share/guile/site/2.0
  or:
    GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/foo:...:/home/<USER>/.local/share/guile/site/2.0

  In Guile 2.0.7 and later versions, all path components after the "..."
  will be added after the default Guile search path.  In earlier
  versions, the "..." will do nothing but harmlessly await your future
  upgrade to 2.0.7+ :)

* If you added Guildhall's directory to the %load-path variable from
  within Guile itself (perhaps in .guile) then append it to the *end* of
  the load path as follows:

    (set! %load-path
          (append %load-path
                  (list "/home/<USER>/.local/share/guile/site/2.0")))

Ian, can you please update your Guildhall "Getting-Started" document
appropriately?  <https://github.com/ijp/guildhall/wiki/Getting-Started>

    Thanks!
      Mark

Re: Guildhall users: please update your GUILE_LOAD_PATH or %load-path

[Ian Price]

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:

> In the future it will be important for Guildhall modules to have a lower
> priority than in the search path than Guile's core modules.  The reason
> is that Guildhall has several portable SRFIs, some of which will be
> superceded by efficient native implementations in core Guile.  One such
> example is SRFI-41, which will soon be replaced by a superior version in
> Guile core.

Not just SRFIs, who knows what other packages will end up bundled with
Guile in the future. However, I do ideally want to see modules in the
Guildhall first, and this change allows this.

> Ian, can you please update your Guildhall "Getting-Started" document
> appropriately?  <https://github.com/ijp/guildhall/wiki/Getting-Started>

I have updated the page accordingly.

-- 
Ian Price -- shift-reset.com

"Programming is like pinball. The reward for doing it well is
the opportunity to do it again" - from "The Wizardy Compiled"