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[bpt/guile.git] / README

This is release 1.0 of 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.

This is the first Guile release made by the Free Software Foundation.
However, Cygnus Support has made earlier releases of Guile, the most
recent of which is known as `guile-iii'.  The present release
incorporates many bug fixes and improvements, but has dropped some
modules that `guile-iii' supported.

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

Guile 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


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.  (At the moment, these
	manuals are incomplete and are currently being revised.)
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.
threads: Glue code for using various threads packages from Guile, including
	qt (see below).

This distribution also includes `qt', a cooperative threads package
from Washington University, which Guile can use.  Qt is under a
separate copyright; see `qt/README' for more details.

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 =============================================

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 (libgh), 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.


Nightly snapshots ====================================================

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

Please keep in mind that the snapshots 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.