* eval.c (scm_nconc2last): Don't accept an empty list; apply must

[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.

The Guile snapshots are available via anonymous FTP from
alpha.gnu.ai.mit.edu, as /gnu/guile-snap.tar.gz.

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


Contents Of This Distribution ========================================

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.
libguile:
	The Guile Scheme interpreter, packaged as an object library
	for you to link with your programs.
guile:  An interactive front end for the Guile Scheme interpreter.
rx:     A regular expression matching library, interfaced to Guile.
ice-9:  Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure.
lang:   A Guile module of tools for writing lexical analyzers and parsers.
ctax:   A Guile module providing a C-like syntax for Scheme.
gtcltk-lib:
	Glue code for talking to tcl/tk from Guile.  The Tcl/Tk
	developers have big plans for the next major release of Tcl/Tk
	which will make possible a clean, direct interface between
	Guile and Tk, so we're providing this very simple-minded
	interface until that's ready.

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.


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

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.

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

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.

Gary Houston wrote the Unix system call support, including the socket
support.

The `qt' threads library was written by David Keppel; contributors to
it include: Weihaw Chuang, Richard O'Keefe, Laurent Perron, John
Polstra, Shinji Suzuki, Assar Westerlund, and Uwe Reder.

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

Mikael Djurfeldt designed and implemented:
* the source-level debugger,
* the GDB patches to support debugging mixed Scheme/C code
* the original implementation of weak hash tables,
* the dynamic root, and
* rewrote the `threads' interface.