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[bpt/guile.git] / README

This is release 1.3 of Guile, Project GNU's extension language
library.  Guile is an interpreter for Scheme, packaged as a library
that you can link into your applications to give them their own
scripting language.  Guile will eventually support other languages as
well, giving users of Guile-based applications a choice of languages.

Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.

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.
guile-config --- a Guile script which provides the information necessary
	to link your programs against the Guile library.
guile-snarf --- a script to parse declarations in your C code for 
	Scheme-visible C functions, Scheme objects to be used by C code, etc.
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.
libqthreads.a --- an object library containing the QuickThreads
	primitives.  If you enabled thread support when you configured
	Guile, you will need to link your code against this too.
<libguile.h>, <guile/gh.h>, <libguile/*.h> --- header files for
	libguile.a, usually installed in /usr/local/include.
ice-9, ice-9/*.scm --- run-time support for Guile: the module
	system, read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other
	infrastructure.  Usually installed in
	/usr/local/share/guile/<version>.
data-rep.info --- An essay on how to write C code that works with
	Guile Scheme values.

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:

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.
guile-config:
	Source for the guile-config script.
qt: 	A cooperative threads package from the University of Washington,
	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.
doc:	Some preliminary documentation for Guile.  The real Guile
	manual is incomplete, and is currently being revised.
doc/example-smob: Sample code, discussed in the preliminary
	documentation above, for a program that extends Guile with a
	new data type, and functions that operate on it.


Anonymous CVS Access and FTP snapshots ===============================

We make the developers' working Guile sources available via anonymous
CVS, and by nightly snapshots, accessible via FTP.  See the files
`ANON-CVS' and `SNAPSHOTS' for details.

If you would like to receive mail when people commit changes to the
Guile CVS repository, you can subscribe to guile-cvs@egcs.cygnus.com
by sending a message to guile-cvs-subscribe@egcs.cygnus.com.  Even
better, you can get daily digests of these commit messages by sending
a message to guile-cvs-digest-subscribe@egcs.cygnus.com.

If you want to subscribe an e-mail address other than the one that
appears in your From: header, say foo@bar.com, send a mail note to
guile-cvs-subscribe-foo=bar.com@egcs.cygnus.com.


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 2.13 --- a system for automatically generating `configure'
	scripts from templates which list the non-portable features a
	program would like to use.  Available in
	"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/autoconf"

Automake 1.4 --- 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.  Automake is available in
	"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/automake"

	Before using automake, you may need to copy `threads.m4' and
	`guile.m4' from the top directory of the Guile core disty to
	`/usr/local/share/aclocal.

libtool 1.2f --- a system for managing the zillion hairy options needed
	on various systems to produce shared libraries.  Available in
	"ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu".

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


Obtaining Guile ======================================================

The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from
prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/guile-1.3.tar.gz.

Via the web, that's:  ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/guile-1.3.tar.gz
For getit, that's:    prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/guile-1.3.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@gnu.org.  Note that one address is @cygnus.com,
and the other is at @gnu.org.


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,
* enhancements to the `threads' interface (based on 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 much of 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 is the author of SCM upon which Guile is based.  Guile
started from SCM version 4e1 in November -94 and is still largely
composed of the original SCM code.

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.