[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: `scheme-script' and multiple Scheme installations

This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 22 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 22 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.



sperber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]) writes:
> >>>>> "David" == David Rush <kumo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> David> I just don't see how forcing them all to use a single name in 'exec'
> David> space will help anything.

And I still don't. Say I've already installed Scsh 0.6, which comes
with the brand new SRFI-22 support and poerted my GWZ application to
take advantage of the SRFI-22 compliant installation
capabilities. I've wrapped eveything up in cond-expands, and I'm
pretty confident that it's "portable".

Joe Bloggs now D/Ls GWZ and installs it on his SRFI-22 system, which
is Gambit. How likely is it to work? Well, if I have *really* done my
homework, maybe pretty good. A more likely scenario is that I haven't
actually run it under Gambit because there are too many
implementations to have covered all of them in my testing. Whoops!
there is an incompatibility.  So I have to go and put the Scheme
implementation specific stuff back into my configure.in, and I have
gained nothing out of the SRFI-22 exercise except the standard
parameter passing.

OK, the example is a bit contrived and arguably GWZ has packaging
bugs, but my point is that SRFI-22 didn't help me deal with them. I've
got no guarantees beyond what I can acquire from inspecting the system
through autoconf, and I'm still pretty much going to need to use
autoconf to do the inspection (if only to verify that I've got a
Scheme that I've actually tested).

> David> none of R5RS, SRFI-0, or SRFI-7 provides
> David> enough functionality to do significant scripting.
> 
> I disagree with that from practical experience.  

To be fair, you *can* write highly portable code with just SRFI-0, I
can't speak to SRFI-7, I don't use it and I haven't seen
widespread support for it (although I haven't looked hard since it is
even more of a meta-language than SRFI-0, and out-of-band to the
executable code, to boot).

> Moreover, SRFI 7
> gives you conditional access to the rest.  The "single name" (several
> in the next revision) is a central aspect of the SRFI, I'd say.

I just feel that single-name doesn't provide enough, and in fact loses
valuable information. Perhaps if 'scheme-script' maintained a registry
of compliant installations on the system along with introspection
facilities at the command line. e.g.

        scheme-script-srfi-0 --on Scsh --on Bigloo

or perhaps something autoconf can use like:

        $scheme-script --substrate
        Scsh 0.6

Otherwise, It doesn't seem to add much value. OTOH, Perhaps I'm just
falling in love with autoconf. Gripping hand is probably that  this is
a good opportunity to shake out non-SRFI compliant systems.

Just my $0.02

david rush
-- 
The Torah is written in black fire inscribed upon white fire - fire
mixed with fire, hewn out of fire and given from fire
	-- 3rd Century Palestinian Merkavah Haggadah