!!! This is not a Guile release; it is a source tree retrieved via
anonymous CVS or as a nightly snapshot at some random time after the
-Guile 1.4 release. If this were a Guile release, you would not see
+Guile 1.8 release. If this were a Guile release, you would not see
this message. !!! [fixme: zonk on release]
-This is a 1.7 development version of Guile, Project GNU's extension
+This is a 1.9 development version 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.
-Guile versions with an odd middle number, i.e. 1.5.* are unstable
+Guile versions with an odd middle number, i.e. 1.9.* are unstable
development versions. Even middle numbers indicate stable versions.
This has been the case since the 1.3.* series.
-The next stable release will be version 1.8.0.
+The next stable release will likely be version 1.10.0.
-Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
+Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org. Note that you must be
+subscribed to this list first, in order to successfully send a report
+to it.
See the LICENSE file for the specific terms that apply to Guile.
in the INSTALL file. Guile specific information and configure options
can be found below, including instructions for installing SLIB.
-Guile can use a number of external packages such as `readline' when
-they are available. Guile expects to be able to find these packages
-in the default compiler setup, it does not try to make any special
-arrangements itself. For example, for the `readline' package, Guile
-expects to be able to find the include file <readline/readline.h>,
-without passing any special `-I' options to the compiler.
+Guile requires a few external packages and can optionally use a number
+of external packages such as `readline' when they are available.
+Guile expects to be able to find these packages in the default
+compiler setup, it does not try to make any special arrangements
+itself. For example, for the `readline' package, Guile expects to be
+able to find the include file <readline/readline.h>, without passing
+any special `-I' options to the compiler.
If you installed an external package, and you used the --prefix
installation option to install it somewhere else than /usr/local, you
more details.
+Required External Packages ================================================
+
+Guile requires the following external packages:
+
+ - GNU MP, at least version 4.1
+
+ GNU MP is used for bignum arithmetic. It is available from
+ http://swox.com/gmp
+
+ - libltdl from libtool, at least from libtool version 1.5.6
+
+ libltdl is used for loading extensions at run-time. It is
+ available from http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/
+
+
Special Instructions For Some Systems =====================================
We would like Guile to build on all systems using the simple
treatment. If you can send us fixes for these problems, we'd be
grateful.
-SunOS 4.1: Guile's shared library support seems to be confused, but
- hey; shared libraries are confusing. You may need to configure
- Guile with a command like:
- ./configure --disable-shared
- For more information on `--disable-shared', see below, "Flags
- Accepted by Configure".
-
-HP/UX: GCC 2.7.2 (and maybe other versions) have trouble creating
- shared libraries if they depend on any non-shared libraries. GCC
- seems to have other problems as well. To work around this, we
- suggest you configure Guile to use the system's C compiler:
- CC=cc ./configure
-
-NetBSD: Perry Metzger says, "Guile will build under NetBSD only using
- gmake -- the native make will not work. (gmake is in our package
- system, so this will not be a problem when we packagize 1.3.)"
-
+ <none yet listed>
Guile specific flags Accepted by Configure =================================
your system and set things up appropriately. However, there are a few
switches specific to Guile you may find useful in some circumstances.
---with-threads --- Build with thread support
+--without-threads --- Build without thread support
- Build a Guile executable and library that supports cooperative
- threading. If you use this switch, Guile will also build and
- install the QuickThreads non-preemptive threading library,
- libqthreads, which you will need to link into your programs after
- libguile. When you use `guile-config', you will pick up all
- neccessary linker flags automatically.
+ Build a Guile executable and library that supports multi-threading.
- Cooperative threads are not yet thoroughly tested; once they are,
- they will be enabled by default. The interaction with blocking I/O
- is pretty ad hoc at the moment. In our experience, bugs in the
- thread support do not affect you if you don't actually use threads.
-
---with-modules --- Specify statically linked `modules'
-
- Guile can dynamically load `plugin modules' during runtime, using
- facilities provided by libtool. Not all platforms support this,
- however. On these platforms, you can statically link the plugin
- modules into libguile when Guile itself is built. XXX - how does
- one specify the modules?
+ The default is to enable threading support when your operating
+ system offsers 'POSIX threads'. When you do not want threading, use
+ `--without-threads'.
--enable-deprecated=LEVEL
Guile may contain features that are `deprecated'. When a feature is
- deprecated, it means that it is still there and fully functional,
- but that there is a better way of achieving the same thing, and we'd
- rather have you use this better way. This allows us to eventually
- remove the old implementation and helps to keep Guile reasonably
- clean of historic baggage.
+ deprecated, it means that it is still there, but that there is a
+ better way of achieving the same thing, and we'd rather have you use
+ this better way. This allows us to eventually remove the old
+ implementation and helps to keep Guile reasonably clean of historic
+ baggage.
+
+ Deprecated features are considered harmful; using them is likely a
+ bug. See below for the related notion of `discouraged' features,
+ which are OK but have fallen out of favor.
See the file NEWS for a list of features that are currently
deprecated. Each entry will also tell you what you should replace
The default is `--enable-deprecated=yes'.
+ In addition to setting GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED in the environment, you
+ can also use (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) and (debug-disable
+ 'warn-deprecated) to enable and disable the detailed messaged at run
+ time.
+
+--disable-discouraged
+
+ In addition to deprecated features, Guile can also contain things
+ that are merely `discouraged'. It is OK to continue to use these
+ features in old code, but new code should avoid them since there are
+ better alternatives.
+
+ There is nothing wrong with a discouraged feature per se, but they
+ might have strange names, or be non-standard, for example. Avoiding
+ them will make your code better.
+
--disable-shared --- Do not build shared libraries.
--disable-static --- Do not build static libraries.
Normally, both static and shared libraries will be built if your
system supports them.
-
--enable-debug-freelist --- Enable freelist debugging.
- This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also
- registers an extra primitive, the setter
+ This enables a debugging version of scm_cell and scm_double_cell,
+ and also registers an extra primitive, the setter
`gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable the
down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
-
--enable-debug-malloc --- Enable malloc debugging.
- Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
+ Include code for debugging of calls to scm_malloc, scm_realloc, etc.
- Checks that
-
- 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
- 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
- scm_must_malloc
- 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
-
- But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
- each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
+ It records the number of allocated objects of each kind. This is
+ useful when searching for memory leaks.
A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
`malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
number of objects of that kind.
-
--enable-guile-debug --- Include internal debugging functions
---disable-arrays --- omit array and uniform array support
--disable-posix --- omit posix interfaces
--disable-networking --- omit networking interfaces
--disable-regex --- omit regular expression interfaces
./configure --host=i686-pc-cygwin --disable-shared
-Two special options for cross building are available:
+A C compiler for the build system is required. The default is
+"PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH cc". If that doesn't suit it can be specified
+with the CC_FOR_BUILD variable in the usual way, for instance
---with-cc-for-build --- native C compiler, to be used during build
- defaults to: `PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH cc'
+ ./configure --host=m68k-unknown-linux-gnu CC_FOR_BUILD=/my/local/gcc
---with-guile-for-build --- native Guile executable, to be used during build
- defaults to: `guile', assuming you just
- installed this guile natively.
+Guile for the build system can be specified similarly with the
+GUILE_FOR_BUILD variable, it defaults to just "guile".
Using Guile Without Installing It =========================================
-If you want to run Guile without installing it, set the environment
-variable `GUILE_LOAD_PATH' to a colon-separated list of directories,
-including the directory containing this INSTALL file. If you used a
-separate build directory, you'll need to include the build directory
-in the path as well.
-
-For example, suppose the Guile distribution unpacked into a directory
-called `/home/jimb/guile-snap' (so the full name of this INSTALL file
-would be `/home/jimb/guile-snap/INSTALL'). Then you might say, if
-you're using Bash or any other Bourne shell variant,
-
- export GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/guile-snap
-
-or if you're using CSH or one of its variants:
-
- setenv GUILE_LOAD_PATH /home/jimb/guile-snap
-
-You will additionally need to set your `LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH' environment
-variable to the directory in which the compiled SRFI support modules
-are created if you want to use the modules for SRFI-4, SRFI-13 or
-SRFI-14 support. Similar to the example above, this will be,
-
- export LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/jimb/guile-snap/srfi/.libs
-
-or if you're using CSH or one of its variants:
-
- setenv LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH /home/jimb/guile-snap/srfi/.libs
+The top directory of the Guile sources contains a script called
+"pre-inst-guile" that can be used to run the Guile that has just been
+built.
Installing SLIB ===========================================================
(require 'primes)
(prime? 7)
-Guile Documentation ==================================================
-The doc directory contains a few articles on specific topics and some
-examples, including data-rep.texi which describes the internal
-representation of data types in Guile. The example-smob directory
-contains example source code for the "Defining New Types (Smobs)" chapter.
+Guile Documentation ==================================================
-The incomplete Guile reference manual is available at
+If you've never used Scheme before, then the Guile Tutorial
+(guile-tut.info) is a good starting point. The Guile Reference Manual
+(guile.info) is the primary documentation for Guile. The Goops object
+system is documented separately (goops.info). A copy of the R5RS
+Scheme specification is included too (r5rs.info).
- ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/snapshots/guile-doc-snap.tar.gz
+Info format versions of this documentation are installed as part of
+the normal build process. The texinfo sources are under the doc
+directory, and other formats like Postscript, PDF, DVI or HTML can be
+generated from them with Tex and Texinfo tools.
-Neil Jerram is working on the new reference manual, which will be
-distributed with guile-core. The new manual will be synchronized with
-the docstrings in the sources. Until then, please be aware that the
-docstrings are likely to be more up-to-date than the old reference
-manual (use `(help)' or see libguile/guile-procedures.txt which is
-generated by the build process).
+The doc directory also includes an example-smob subdirectory which has
+the example code from the "Defining New Types (Smobs)" chapter of the
+reference manual.
The Guile WWW page is at
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.
- guile-tools --- a wrapper to invoke the executable modules in
- subdirectory `scripts' (also installed).
Libraries, in ${prefix}/lib. Depending on the platform and options
given to configure, you may get shared libraries in addition
libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter,
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.
libguilereadline.a --- an object library containing glue code for the
- GNU readline library. See NEWS for instructions on how to enable
- readline for your personal use.
+ GNU readline library.
+
libguile-srfi-*.a --- various SRFI support libraries
Header files, in ${prefix}/include:
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.
guile-readline:
The glue code for using GNU readline with Guile. This
will be build when configure can find a recent enough readline
Mailman mailing list interface at
<http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-cvs>
-
-
-Obtaining Guile ======================================================
-
-The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from
-
-ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/guile/guile-1.4.tar.gz
-
-The mailing list `guile-user@gnu.org' carries discussions, questions,
-and often answers, about Guile. To subscribe, use the Mailman mailing
-list interface at <http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-user>
-Of course, please send bug reports (and fixes!) to bug-guile@gnu.org.
HCoop / bpt / guile.git / blobdiff