On 2023-01-23 11:18, Ludovic Courtès wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in> skribis:
>
>> On 2023-01-17 10:02, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Andrew Tropin <andrew@trop.in> skribis:
>>>
>>>>> What about accepting sexps (or gexps) instead of strings?  As in:
>>>>>
>>>>>   (init-file '((require 'whatever) (setq something t)))
>>>>
>>>> A quick minor note on this approach: it won't be possible to use
>>>> #'elisp-function inside such configuration because it will be
>>>> interpreted by guile reader, but actually rde lives without this
>>>> functionality completely ok.
>>>
>>> Specifically:
>>>
>>>   (write '#'x)
>>>   |= (syntax x)
>>>
>>> But we can use (guix read-print) and ensure that it prints #'.
>>>
>>
>> Do you have any links to docs/sample implementations on the topic of
>> extending guile reader, so we have an example to start with?
>
> It’s not the reader but rather the writer that we’d want to tweak.

Right, it already can read #'x as (syntax x) and we can print it
properly later, but AFAIK comments are ignored by the default reader.
So I would expect to do something (very roughly) like this:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(parameterize (((@@ (guix gexp) read-procedure) read-with-comments))
  #~(list 'hello ; Comment I would like to preserve during serialization
          'guix))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Of course it doesn't work, but I hope demonstrates the idea.

>
> In (guix read-print), ‘pretty-print-with-comments’ already special
> cases quasiquote etc. so that it prints ‘`’ (backtick) and not
> ‘quasiquote'.  We’d add clauses for ‘syntax’ and ‘quasisyntax’.
>

It seems ice-9 pretty-print also preserves backticks, but I see that
pretty-print-with-comments also preserves gexps, which is cool.  Adding
syntax will make it even cooler.

>> I think it will be cool to hook up a custom reader, ideally comment
>> preserving, for emacs lisp inside scheme files.
>
> (guix read-print) is what you want.  :-)
>

Can you give a hint on how to use it for preserving comments, please?

>>>> Do we want something like this possible?
>>>>
>>>> (init-file `((require 'whatever)
>>>>              (setq something t)
>>>>              (load ,(local-file "old-init.el")))
>>>
>>> It’d be nice.  In that case, we’ll want it to be a gexp though:
>>>
>>>   #~((require 'whatever) (load #$(local-file …)))
>>>
>>
>> gexps are nice, but do we really need/want them here?  Do you have any
>> thoughts on what are the benifits over quasiquotes in this case?  Maybe
>> some examples?
>
> The benefit in the example above is that the gexp would actually work
> whereas the sexp wouldn’t :-), unless there’s code somewhere to manually
> traverse the sexp adn replace the <local-file> record with its store
> item (which is what gexps are about).
>
> I hope that makes sense!

With this simple serializer we already achieved quite good results: 
https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/rde/tree/388d3ad95e8607543df3dcdf26d058b610e77389/src/rde/serializers/lisp.scm#L35

For this input
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
`((load ,(local-file "./feature-lists.scm"))
  ,#~(format #f "hello") ; top level gexps are evaluated
  (list ,#~(format #f "hello")) ; nested gexps are not
  ,#~";; hacky comment"
  ;; comment, which is not preserved
  #'hi-fn ; incorrectly serialized, but fixable by alternative
          ; pretty-print
  )
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

it provides quite satisfying results:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(load "/gnu/store/xb6ma0mcgg1zzq645s63arvy3qskmbiz-feature-lists.scm")
hello
(list (format #f "hello"))
;; hacky comment
(syntax hi-fn)
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

It's a little incosistent (top level gexp are evaluated, but nested are
not), comments are not preserved and #' serialized incorrectly, but
other than that it works very good.

WDYT about overall approach used here?  or we can do it radically
better?

-- 
Best regards,
Andrew Tropin