README

   1 This is release 1.3 of Guile, a portable, embeddable Scheme
   2 implementation written in C.  Guile provides a machine independent
   3 execution platform that can be linked in as a library when building
   4 extensible programs.
   5
   6 Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
   7
   8 About This Distribution ==============================================
   9
  10 Building and installing this distribution gives you:
  11 guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile, usually installed in
  12         /usr/local/bin.  With no arguments, this is a simple
  13         interactive Scheme interpreter.  It can also be used as an
  14         interpreter for script files; see the NEWS file for details.
  15 guile-config --- a Guile script which provides the information necessary
  16         to link your programs against the Guile library.
  17 guile-snarf --- a script to parse declarations in your C code for
  18         Scheme-visible C functions, Scheme objects to be used by C code, etc.
  19 libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter,
  20         usually installed in /usr/local/lib.  You can use Guile in
  21         your own programs by linking against this.
  22 libqthreads.a --- an object library containing the QuickThreads
  23         primitives.  If you enabled thread support when you configured
  24         Guile, you will need to link your code against this too.
  25 <libguile.h>, <guile/gh.h>, <libguile/*.h> --- header files for
  26         libguile.a, usually installed in /usr/local/include.
  27 ice-9, ice-9/*.scm --- run-time support for Guile: the module
  28         system, read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other
  29         infrastructure.  Usually installed in
  30         /usr/local/share/guile/<version>.
  31 data-rep.info --- An essay on how to write C code that works with
  32         Guile Scheme values.
  33
  34 Interesting files include:
  35 - INSTALL, which contains instructions on building and installing Guile.
  36 - NEWS, which describes user-visible changes since the last release of Guile.
  37 - COPYING, which describes the terms under which you may redistribute
  38   Guile, and explains that there is no warranty.
  39
  40 The Guile source tree is laid out as follows:
  41
  42 libguile:
  43         The Guile Scheme interpreter --- both the object library
  44         for you to link with your programs, and the executable you can run.
  45 ice-9:  Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure.
  46 guile-config:
  47         Source for the guile-config script.
  48 qt:     A cooperative threads package from the University of Washington,
  49         which Guile can use.  If you configure Guile with the
  50         --with-threads flag, you will need to link against the -lqt
  51         library, found in this directory.  Qt is under a separate
  52         copyright; see `qt/README' for more details.
  53 doc:    Some preliminary documentation for Guile.  The real Guile
  54         manual is incomplete, and is currently being revised.
  55 doc/example-smob: Sample code, discussed in the preliminary
  56         documentation above, for a program that extends Guile with a
  57         new data type, and functions that operate on it.
  58
  59
  60 Anonymous CVS Access and FTP snapshots ===============================
  61
  62 We make the developers' working Guile sources available via anonymous
  63 CVS, and by nightly snapshots, accessible via FTP.  See the files
  64 `ANON-CVS' and `SNAPSHOTS' for details.
  65
  66
  67 Hacking It Yourself ==================================================
  68
  69 As distributed, Guile needs only an ANSI C compiler and a Unix system
  70 to compile.  However, Guile's makefiles, configuration scripts, and a
  71 few other files are automatically generated, not written by hand.  If
  72 you want to make changes to the system (which we encourage!) you will
  73 find it helpful to have the tools we use to develop Guile.  They
  74 are the following:
  75
  76 Autoconf 2.12 --- a system for automatically generating `configure'
  77         scripts from templates which list the non-portable features a
  78         program would like to use.  Available in
  79         "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
  80
  81 Automake 1.3 --- a system for automatically generating Makefiles that
  82         conform to the (rather Byzantine) GNU coding standards.  The
  83         nice thing is that it takes care of hairy targets like 'make
  84         dist' and 'make distclean', and automatically generates
  85         Makefile dependencies.  Automake is available in
  86         "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
  87
  88         Before using automake, you may need to copy `threads.m4' and
  89         `guile.m4' from the top directory of the Guile core disty to
  90         `/usr/local/share/aclocal.
  91
  92 libtool 1.2 --- a system for managing the zillion hairy options needed
  93         on various systems to produce shared libraries.  Available in
  94         "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
  95
  96 You are lost in a little maze of automatically generated files, all
  97 different.
  98 >
  99
 100
 101 Obtaining Guile ======================================================
 102
 103 The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from
 104 prep.ai.mit.edu, as /pub/gnu/guile-1.3.tar.gz.
 105
 106 Via the web, that's:  ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/guile-1.3.tar.gz
 107 For getit, that's:    prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/guile-1.3.tar.gz
 108
 109 The mailing list `guile@cygnus.com' carries discussions, questions,
 110 and often answers, about Guile.  To subscribe, send mail to
 111 guile-request@cygnus.com.  Of course, please send bug reports (and
 112 fixes!) to bug-guile@gnu.org.  Note that one address is @cygnus.com,
 113 and the other is at @gnu.org.
 114
 115
 116 Authors And Contributors =============================================
 117
 118 Many people have generously contributed to Guile.  However, any errors
 119 are the responsibility of the primary Guile maintainer, Jim Blandy.
 120
 121 Mikael Djurfeldt designed and implemented:
 122 * the source-level debugging support (although the debugger's user
 123   interface is not yet complete)
 124 * stack overflow detection,
 125 * the GDB patches to support debugging mixed Scheme/C code,
 126 * the original implementation of weak hash tables,
 127 * enhancements to the `threads' interface (based on Anthony Green's
 128   work), and
 129 * detection of circular references during printing.
 130
 131 Mark Galassi contributed the Guile high-level functions (gh_*), and
 132 wrote the guile-programmer and guile-user manuals.  (These are in the
 133 process of revision.)
 134
 135 Anthony Green wrote the original version of `threads', the interface
 136 between Guile and qt.
 137
 138 Gary Houston wrote much of the Unix system call support, including the
 139 socket support, and did a lot of work on the error handling code.
 140
 141 Tom Lord librarified SCM, yielding Guile.  He wrote Guile's operating
 142 system, Ice-9, and connected Guile to Tcl/Tk and the `rx' regular
 143 expression matcher.
 144
 145 Aubrey Jaffer is the author of SCM upon which Guile is based.  Guile
 146 started from SCM version 4e1 in November -94 and is still largely
 147 composed of the original SCM code.
 148
 149 George Carrette wrote SIOD, a stand-alone scheme interpreter.
 150 Although most of this code as been rewritten or replaced over time,
 151 the garbage collector from SIOD is still an important part of Guile.