| 1 | This is not a Guile release; it is a source tree retrieved via |
| 2 | anonymous CVS or as a nightly snapshot at some random time after the |
| 3 | Guile 1.4 release. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | This is a 1.5 development version of Guile, Project GNU's extension |
| 6 | language library. Guile is an interpreter for Scheme, packaged as a |
| 7 | library that you can link into your applications to give them their |
| 8 | own scripting language. Guile will eventually support other languages |
| 9 | as well, giving users of Guile-based applications a choice of |
| 10 | languages. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | Guile versions with an odd middle number, i.e. 1.5.* are unstable |
| 13 | development versions. Even middle numbers indicate stable versions. |
| 14 | This has been the case since the 1.3.* series. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | The next stable release will be version 1.6.0. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Guile Documentation ================================================== |
| 21 | |
| 22 | The doc directory contains a few articles on specific topics and some |
| 23 | examples, including data-rep.texi which describes the internal |
| 24 | representation of data types in Guile. The example-smob directory |
| 25 | contains example source code for the "Defining New Types (Smobs)" chapter. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | The incomplete Guile reference manual is available at |
| 28 | |
| 29 | ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/snapshots/guile-doc-snap.tar.gz |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Neil Jerram is working on the new reference manual, which will be |
| 32 | distributed with guile-core. The new manual will be synchronized with |
| 33 | the docstrings in the sources. Until then, please be aware that the |
| 34 | docstrings are likely to be more up-to-date than the old reference |
| 35 | manual (use `(help)' or see libguile/guile-procedures.txt which is |
| 36 | generated by the build process). |
| 37 | |
| 38 | The Guile WWW page is at |
| 39 | |
| 40 | http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html |
| 41 | |
| 42 | It contains a link to the Guile FAQ. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Guile License ================================================== |
| 45 | |
| 46 | The license of Guile consists of the GNU GPL plus a special statement |
| 47 | giving blanket permission to link with non-free software. This is the |
| 48 | license statement as found in any individual file that it applies to: |
| 49 | |
| 50 | This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify |
| 51 | it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by |
| 52 | the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) |
| 53 | any later version. |
| 54 | |
| 55 | This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, |
| 56 | but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of |
| 57 | MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the |
| 58 | GNU General Public License for more details. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License |
| 61 | along with this software; see the file COPYING. If not, write to |
| 62 | the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, |
| 63 | Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA |
| 64 | |
| 65 | As a special exception, the Free Software Foundation gives permission |
| 66 | for additional uses of the text contained in its release of GUILE. |
| 67 | |
| 68 | The exception is that, if you link the GUILE library with other files |
| 69 | to produce an executable, this does not by itself cause the |
| 70 | resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. |
| 71 | Your use of that executable is in no way restricted on account of |
| 72 | linking the GUILE library code into it. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why |
| 75 | the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | This exception applies only to the code released by the |
| 78 | Free Software Foundation under the name GUILE. If you copy |
| 79 | code from other Free Software Foundation releases into a copy of |
| 80 | GUILE, as the General Public License permits, the exception does |
| 81 | not apply to the code that you add in this way. To avoid misleading |
| 82 | anyone as to the status of such modified files, you must delete |
| 83 | this exception notice from them. |
| 84 | |
| 85 | If you write modifications of your own for GUILE, it is your choice |
| 86 | whether to permit this exception to apply to your modifications. |
| 87 | If you do not wish that, delete this exception notice. |
| 88 | |
| 89 | Handling of Deprecated Features ====================================== |
| 90 | |
| 91 | Guile may contain features that are `deprecated'. When a feature is |
| 92 | deprecated, it means that it is still there and fully functional, but |
| 93 | that there is a better way of achieving the same thing, and we'd |
| 94 | rather have you use this better way. This allows us to eventually |
| 95 | remove the old implementation and helps to keep Guile reasonably clean |
| 96 | of historic baggage. |
| 97 | |
| 98 | See the file NEWS for a list of features that are currently |
| 99 | deprecated. Each entry will also tell you what you should replace |
| 100 | your code with. |
| 101 | |
| 102 | To give you some help with this process, and to encourage (OK, nudge) |
| 103 | people to switch to the newer methods, Guile can emit warnings or |
| 104 | errors when you use a deprecated feature. There is quite a range of |
| 105 | possibilities, from being completely silent to giving errors at link |
| 106 | time. What exactly happens is determined both by the value of the |
| 107 | `--enable-deprecated' configuration option when Guile was built, and |
| 108 | by the GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED environment variable. |
| 109 | |
| 110 | It works like this: |
| 111 | |
| 112 | When Guile has been configured with `--enable-deprecated=no' (or, |
| 113 | equivalently, with `--disable-deprecated') then all deprecated |
| 114 | features are omitted from Guile. You will get "undefined |
| 115 | reference", "variable unbound" or similar errors when you try to use |
| 116 | them. |
| 117 | |
| 118 | When `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' has been specified (for LEVEL not |
| 119 | "no"), LEVEL will be used as the default value of the environment |
| 120 | variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED. A value of "yes" is changed to |
| 121 | "summary" and "shutup" is changed to "no", however. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION has the value "no", nothing special will |
| 124 | happen when a deprecated feature is used. |
| 125 | |
| 126 | When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION has the value "summary", and a deprecated |
| 127 | feature has been used, Guile will print this message at exit: |
| 128 | |
| 129 | Some deprecated features have been used. Set the environment |
| 130 | variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED to "detailed" and rerun the program |
| 131 | to get more information. Set it to "no" to suppress this message. |
| 132 | |
| 133 | When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION has the value "detailed", a detailed |
| 134 | warning is emitted immediatly for the first use of a deprecated |
| 135 | feature. |
| 136 | |
| 137 | The default is `--enable-deprecated=yes'. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | About This Distribution ============================================== |
| 140 | |
| 141 | Interesting files include: |
| 142 | |
| 143 | - INSTALL, which contains instructions on building and installing Guile. |
| 144 | - NEWS, which describes user-visible changes since the last release of Guile. |
| 145 | |
| 146 | Files are usually installed according to the prefix specified to |
| 147 | configure, /usr/local by default. Building and installing gives you: |
| 148 | |
| 149 | Executables, in ${prefix}/bin: |
| 150 | |
| 151 | guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile. With no arguments, this |
| 152 | is a simple interactive Scheme interpreter. It can also be used |
| 153 | as an interpreter for script files; see the NEWS file for details. |
| 154 | guile-config --- a Guile script which provides the information necessary |
| 155 | to link your programs against the Guile library. |
| 156 | guile-snarf --- a script to parse declarations in your C code for |
| 157 | Scheme-visible C functions, Scheme objects to be used by C code, |
| 158 | etc. |
| 159 | |
| 160 | Libraries, in ${prefix}/lib. Depending on the platform and options |
| 161 | given to configure, you may get shared libraries in addition |
| 162 | to or instead of these static libraries: |
| 163 | |
| 164 | libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter, |
| 165 | You can use Guile in your own programs by linking against this. |
| 166 | libqthreads.a --- an object library containing the QuickThreads |
| 167 | primitives. If you enabled thread support when you configured |
| 168 | Guile, you will need to link your code against this too. |
| 169 | libguilereadline.a --- an object library containing glue code for the |
| 170 | GNU readline library. See NEWS for instructions on how to enable |
| 171 | readline for your personal use. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | Header files, in ${prefix}/include: |
| 174 | |
| 175 | libguile.h, guile/gh.h, libguile/*.h --- for libguile. |
| 176 | guile-readline/readline.h --- for guile-readline. |
| 177 | |
| 178 | Support files, in ${prefix}/share/guile/<version>: |
| 179 | |
| 180 | ice-9/* --- run-time support for Guile: the module system, |
| 181 | read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other infrastructure. |
| 182 | |
| 183 | Automake macros, in ${prefix}/share/aclocal: |
| 184 | |
| 185 | guile.m4 |
| 186 | |
| 187 | Documentation in Info format, in ${prefix}/info: |
| 188 | |
| 189 | data-rep.info --- an essay on how to write C code that works with |
| 190 | Guile Scheme values. |
| 191 | |
| 192 | The Guile source tree is laid out as follows: |
| 193 | |
| 194 | libguile: |
| 195 | The Guile Scheme interpreter --- both the object library |
| 196 | for you to link with your programs, and the executable you can run. |
| 197 | ice-9: Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure. |
| 198 | guile-config: |
| 199 | Source for the guile-config script. |
| 200 | qt: A cooperative threads package from the University of Washington, |
| 201 | which Guile can use. If you configure Guile with the |
| 202 | --with-threads flag, you will need to link against the -lqt |
| 203 | library, found in this directory. Qt is under a separate |
| 204 | copyright; see `qt/README' for more details. |
| 205 | guile-readline: |
| 206 | The glue code for using GNU readline with Guile. This |
| 207 | will be build when configure can find a recent enough readline |
| 208 | library on your system. |
| 209 | doc: Documentation (see above). |
| 210 | |
| 211 | Anonymous CVS Access and FTP snapshots =============================== |
| 212 | |
| 213 | We make the developers' working Guile sources available via anonymous |
| 214 | CVS, and by nightly snapshots, accessible via FTP. See the files |
| 215 | `ANON-CVS' and `SNAPSHOTS' for details. |
| 216 | |
| 217 | If you would like to receive mail when people commit changes to the |
| 218 | Guile CVS repository, you can subscribe to guile-cvs@gnu.org by the |
| 219 | Mailman mailing list interface at |
| 220 | |
| 221 | <http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-cvs> |
| 222 | |
| 223 | |
| 224 | Obtaining Guile ====================================================== |
| 225 | |
| 226 | The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from |
| 227 | |
| 228 | ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/guile/guile-1.4.tar.gz |
| 229 | |
| 230 | The mailing list `guile-user@gnu.org' carries discussions, questions, |
| 231 | and often answers, about Guile. To subscribe, use the Mailman mailing |
| 232 | list interface at <http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-user> |
| 233 | Of course, please send bug reports (and fixes!) to bug-guile@gnu.org. |