News for scm_call_N and scm_apply_N.

[bpt/guile.git] / README

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.

This is a 1.5 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
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 1.6.0.

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

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.

The incomplete Guile reference manual is available at

  ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/snapshots/guile-doc-snap.tar.gz

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 Guile WWW page is at

  http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html

It contains a link to the Guile FAQ.

Guile License ==================================================

The license of Guile consists of the GNU GPL plus a special statement
giving blanket permission to link with non-free software.  This is the
license statement as found in any individual file that it applies to:

 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
 any later version.

 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 GNU General Public License for more details.

 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 along with this software; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to
 the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330,
 Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

 As a special exception, the Free Software Foundation gives permission
 for additional uses of the text contained in its release of GUILE.

 The exception is that, if you link the GUILE library with other files
 to produce an executable, this does not by itself cause the
 resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License.
 Your use of that executable is in no way restricted on account of
 linking the GUILE library code into it.

 This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why
 the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.

 This exception applies only to the code released by the
 Free Software Foundation under the name GUILE.  If you copy
 code from other Free Software Foundation releases into a copy of
 GUILE, as the General Public License permits, the exception does
 not apply to the code that you add in this way.  To avoid misleading
 anyone as to the status of such modified files, you must delete
 this exception notice from them.

 If you write modifications of your own for GUILE, it is your choice
 whether to permit this exception to apply to your modifications.
 If you do not wish that, delete this exception notice.

Handling of Deprecated Features ======================================

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.

See the file NEWS for a list of features that are currently
deprecated.  Each entry will also tell you what you should replace
your code with.

To give you some help with this process, and to encourage (OK, nudge)
people to switch to the newer methods, Guile can emit warnings or
errors when you use a deprecated feature.  There is quite a range of
possibilities, from being completely silent to giving errors at link
time.  What exactly happens is determined both by the value of the
`--enable-deprecated' configuration option when Guile was built, and
by the GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED environment variable.

It works like this:

  When Guile has been configured with `--enable-deprecated=no' (or,
  equivalently, with `--disable-deprecated') then all deprecated
  features are omitted from Guile.  You will get "undefined
  reference", "variable unbound" or similar errors when you try to use
  them.

  When `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' has been specified (for LEVEL not
  "no"), LEVEL will be used as the default value of the environment
  variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED.  A value of "yes" is changed to
  "summary" and "shutup" is changed to "no", however.

  When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION has the value "no", nothing special will
  happen when a deprecated feature is used.

  When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION has the value "summary", and a deprecated
  feature has been used, Guile will print this message at exit:

    Some deprecated features have been used.  Set the environment
    variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED to "detailed" and rerun the program
    to get more information.  Set it to "no" to suppress this message.

  When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION has the value "detailed", a detailed
  warning is emitted immediatly for the first use of a deprecated
  feature.

The default is `--enable-deprecated=yes'.

About 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.

Files are usually installed according to the prefix specified to
configure, /usr/local by default.  Building and installing gives you:

Executables, in ${prefix}/bin:

guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile.  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.

Libraries, in ${prefix}/lib.  Depending on the platform and options
        given to configure, you may get shared libraries in addition
	to or instead of these static libraries:
	
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.

Header files, in ${prefix}/include:

libguile.h, guile/gh.h, libguile/*.h --- for libguile.
guile-readline/readline.h --- for guile-readline.

Support files, in ${prefix}/share/guile/<version>:

ice-9/* --- run-time support for Guile: the module system,
	read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other infrastructure.

Automake macros, in ${prefix}/share/aclocal:

guile.m4

Documentation in Info format, in ${prefix}/info:

data-rep.info --- an essay on how to write C code that works with
	Guile Scheme values.

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.
guile-readline:
        The glue code for using GNU readline with Guile.  This
        will be build when configure can find a recent enough readline
        library on your system.
doc:	Documentation (see above).

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@gnu.org by the
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.