2.6 Release -- SCheme

[Mike Alexander]

--On December 31, 2011 6:17:13 PM -0500 Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> 
wrote:

>
> On Sat, December 31, 2011 5:46 pm, Mike Alexander wrote:
>> --On December 31, 2011 6:22:55 PM +0000 Hendrik Boom
>> <hendrik at topoi.pooq.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:19:58 +0100, Geert Janssens wrote:
>>>
>>> This is probably a more drastic change than guile 2.0, but:
>>>
>>> There's another implementation of Scheme available that actually
>>> compiles  Scheme to C or C++ -- Gambit-C.  You can actually embed
>>> C++ code within  the C code, even #include stuff.  There's also an
>>> interpreter, but the  interpreter doesn't have embedded C/C++ code,
>>> though it can call  previously compiled code that does.  The Debian
>>> package is called gambc. I have no idea whether this would be easier
>>> to use and maintain than  using guile.
>>
>> I don't know anything about Gambit-C, but it's also available in
>> MacPorts on MacOSX.  The description sounds promising.  The home page
>> is at
>> <http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/wiki/index.php/Main_Page>
>> where they also link to Windows (and iPad!) installers.
>
> Is it really worth our time to find another scheme implementation and
> swap everything over to it?  I would think that it would be better to
> write a report infrastructure in a language that would seem more
> "popular" (python), build in the infrastructure, and then send out a
> call for report writers to convert the existing scheme reports over
> to the new language.

That's a very good question.  I think the answer depends to some extent 
on the effort involved.  Switching languages will likely be 
non-trivial, switching to Gambit might be easier (I don't really know). 
I wasn't advocating switching to Gambit, just pointing out that this is 
a possibility that might be worth considering.  As I said I know almost 
nothing about Gambit.  Switching languages might be better but choosing 
a language may be more difficult than it seems.  Python is popular now, 
but will it be in 10 years?  I've seen lots of languages come and go.

          Mike