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[bpt/guile.git] / README

This is a nightly snapshot of Guile, a portable, embeddable Scheme
implementation written in C.  Guile provides a machine independent
execution platform that can be linked in as a library when building
extensible programs.

Please send bug reports to bug-guile@prep.ai.mit.edu.


Important Facts About Snapshots ======================================

Please keep in mind that these sources are strictly experimental; they
will usually not be well-tested, and may not even compile on some
systems.  They may contain interfaces which will change.  They will
usually not be of sufficient quality for use by people not comfortable
hacking the innards of Guile.  Caveat!

However, we're providing them anyway for several reasons.  We'd like
to encourage people to get involved in developing Guile.  People
willing to use the bleeding edge of development can get earlier access
to new, experimental features.  Patches submitted relative to recent
snapshots will be easier for us to evaluate and install, since the
patch's original sources will be closer to what we're working with.
And it allows us to start testing features earlier.

Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are available via
anonymous FTP from ftp.cyclic.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.

Via the web, that's:  ftp://ftp.cyclic.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
For getit, that's:    ftp.cyclic.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz


The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from
prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/guile-1.0.tar.gz.

Via the web, that's:  ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/guile-1.0.tar.gz
For getit, that's:    prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/guile-1.0.tar.gz

The mailing list `guile@cygnus.com' carries discussions, questions,
and often answers, about Guile.  To subscribe, send mail to
guile-request@cygnus.com.  Of course, please send bug reports (and
fixes!) to bug-guile@prep.ai.mit.edu.


About This Distribution ==============================================

Building and installing this distribution gives you:
guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile, usually installed in
	/usr/local/bin.  With no arguments, this is a simple
	interactive Scheme interpreter.  It can also be used as an
	interpreter for script files; see the NEWS file for details.
libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter,
	usually installed in /usr/local/lib.  You can use Guile in
	your own programs by linking against this.
<libguile.h>, <libguile/*.h> --- header files for libguile.a, usually
	installed in /usr/local/include.


Interesting files include:
- INSTALL, which contains instructions on building and installing Guile.
- NEWS, which describes user-visible changes since the last release of Guile.
- COPYING, which describes the terms under which you may redistribute
  Guile, and explains that there is no warranty.

The Guile source tree is laid out as follows:

doc:	Documentation for Guile, in Texinfo form.  (At the moment, these
	manuals are incomplete and are currently being revised.)
libguile:
	The Guile Scheme interpreter --- both the object library
	for you to link with your programs, and the executable you can run.
ice-9:  Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure.

qt: 	A cooperative threads package from Washington University,
	which Guile can use.  If you configure Guile with the
        --with-threads flag, you will need to link against the -lqt
        library, found in this directory.  Qt is under a separate
        copyright; see `qt/README' for more details.


Hacking It Yourself ==================================================

As distributed, Guile needs only an ANSI C compiler and a Unix system
to compile.  However, Guile's makefiles, configuration scripts, and a
few other files are automatically generated, not written by hand.  If
you want to make changes to the system (which we encourage!) you will
find it helpful to have the tools we use to develop Guile.  They
are the following:

Autoconf 2.12 --- a system for automatically generate `configure'
	scripts from templates which list the non-portable features a
	program would like to use.  Available in
	"ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".

Automake 1.1n --- a system for automatically generating Makefiles that
	conform to the (rather Byzantine) GNU coding standards.  The
	nice thing is that it takes care of hairy targets like 'make
	dist' and 'make distclean', and automatically generates
	Makefile dependencies.  Available in
	"ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/tromey".

libtool 0.9d --- a system for managing the zillion hairy options needed
	on various systems to produce shared libraries.  Available in
	"ftp://alpha.gnu.ai.mit.edu/gnu".

You are lost in a little maze of automatically generated files, all
different.
> 


Authors And Contributors =============================================

Many people have generously contributed to Guile.  However, any errors
are the responsibility of the primary Guile maintainer, Jim Blandy.

Mikael Djurfeldt designed and implemented:
* the source-level debugging support (although the debugger's user
  interface is not yet complete)
* stack overflow detection,
* the GDB patches to support debugging mixed Scheme/C code,
* the original implementation of weak hash tables,
* the `threads' interface (rewriting Anthony Green's work), and
* detection of circular references during printing.

Mark Galassi contributed the Guile high-level functions (gh_*), and
wrote the guile-programmer and guile-user manuals.  (These are in the
process of revision.)

Anthony Green wrote the original version of `threads', the interface
between Guile and qt.

Gary Houston wrote the Unix system call support, including the socket
support, and did a lot of work on the error handling code.

Tom Lord librarified SCM, yielding Guile.  He wrote Guile's operating
system, Ice-9, and connected Guile to Tcl/Tk and the `rx' regular
expression matcher.

Aubrey Jaffer seriously tuned performance and added features.  He
designed many hairy but beautiful parts of the tag system and
evaluator.

George Carrette wrote SIOD, a stand-alone scheme interpreter.
Although most of this code as been rewritten or replaced over time,
the garbage collector from SIOD is still an important part of Guile.