GnuCash 1.8.1-4 and RedHat 9: Error in main.scm

[Derek Atkins]

Francis K Shim <belfrancis2001 at yahoo.ca> writes:

> Okay, so the patch is actually to a guile scheme module.  Seems like a
> good test case for Guile and it answers my question about which RPM
> package to look forward to for the real fix.

Well, it's a guile-1.6 "problem" in that they changed the parser
requirements -- the problem is that gnucash was using the older
requirements and therefore was not being properly parsed by guile-1.6.
Gnucash-1.8.3 (when it is eventually released sometime in the next
month or so) will fix the problem.

> Can you correct me if I am wrong... but I am trying to understand the

I can try...

> architecture here (it is all new to me).  Scheme, an interpreted
> language, is really a Lisp derivative and hence would be using a
> probably well established Scheme interpreter which I gather is the
> umb-scheme package.

Correct up until the end.  The interpreter we use is the guile
interpreter.

> The umb-scheme package provides the interpreter as well as standard
> modules (possibly ISO or ANSII or whatever) which are hopefully well
> established and defined.  I saw a reference to SLIB so I will take a
> closer look at that as well.

I do not know if umb-scheme provides an interpreter.  The rest is correct.

> Guile is a package of Scheme modules that essentially uses the
> standard modules from the umb-scheme module set to provide GUI tools
> and API for applications such as GnuCash.

Negative.  Guile is an interpreter (both standalone and embeded),
as well as a bunch of ancillary scheme code.

> Okay... so GnuCash, as I am learning, is a conglomerate of compiled
> and interpretive parts.  The compiled "parts" require a longer time to
> release changes, but the interpretive parts are like scripts and more
> flexible to configure on the fly... provided one knows the language
> and what procedures are in the library modules.

Correct.

> The kind of simple syntax error you are refering to should still be
> something that can be deduced by a Scheme-compiler, not interpreter,
> that keeps track of type-safety, argument count even namespace
> checks. I think that this ups the argument for a Scheme-compiler that
> could at least be used for checking; of course, if we go through all
> that trouble we might as well release the compiled Scheme libraries
> produced by the compiler.
> 
> I can see the conundrum :-(

Yep. :)

> Regards,
> Frank

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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