| 1 | This is version 2.0 of Guile, Project GNU's extension language library. |
| 2 | Guile is an implementation of the Scheme programming language, packaged |
| 3 | as a library that can be linked into applications to give them their own |
| 4 | extension language. Guile supports other languages as well, giving |
| 5 | users of Guile-based applications a choice of languages. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | See the LICENSE file for the specific terms that apply to Guile. Note |
| 10 | that for any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this |
| 11 | package, the range specifies every single year in that closed interval. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | |
| 14 | Additional INSTALL instructions =========================================== |
| 15 | |
| 16 | Generic instructions for configuring and compiling Guile can be found |
| 17 | in the INSTALL file. Guile specific information and configure options |
| 18 | can be found below, including instructions for installing SLIB. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Guile depends on the following external libraries. |
| 21 | - libgmp |
| 22 | - libiconv |
| 23 | - libintl |
| 24 | - libltdl |
| 25 | - libunistring |
| 26 | - libgc |
| 27 | - libffi |
| 28 | It will also use the libreadline library if it is available. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | There is a corresponding `--with-XXX-prefix' option for each of these |
| 31 | libraries (except for libgc and libffi which use `pkg-config', see |
| 32 | below) that you can use when invoking ./configure, if you have these |
| 33 | libraries installed in a location other than the standard places (/usr |
| 34 | and /usr/local). |
| 35 | |
| 36 | These options are provided by the Gnulib `havelib' module, and details |
| 37 | of how they work are documented in `Searching for Libraries' in the |
| 38 | Gnulib manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual). The extent |
| 39 | to which they work on a given OS depends on whether that OS supports |
| 40 | encoding full library path names in executables (aka `rpath'). Also |
| 41 | note that using these options, and hence hardcoding full library path |
| 42 | names (where that is supported), makes it impossible to later move the |
| 43 | built executables and libraries to an installation location other than |
| 44 | the one that was specified at build time. |
| 45 | |
| 46 | Another possible approach is to set CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS on the |
| 47 | configure command-line, so that they include -I options for all the |
| 48 | non-standard places where you have installed header files and -L |
| 49 | options for all the non-standard places where you have installed |
| 50 | libraries. This will allow configure and make to find those headers |
| 51 | and libraries during the build. E.g.: |
| 52 | |
| 53 | ../configure [...] CPPFLAGS='-I/my/include' LDFLAGS='-L/my/lib' |
| 54 | |
| 55 | The locations found will not be hardcoded into the build executables and |
| 56 | libraries, so with this approach you will probably also need to set |
| 57 | LD_LIBRARY_PATH correspondingly, to allow Guile to find the necessary |
| 58 | libraries again at runtime. |
| 59 | |
| 60 | |
| 61 | Required External Packages ================================================ |
| 62 | |
| 63 | Guile requires the following external packages: |
| 64 | |
| 65 | - GNU MP, at least version 4.2 |
| 66 | |
| 67 | GNU MP is used for bignum arithmetic. It is available from |
| 68 | http://gmplib.org/ . |
| 69 | |
| 70 | - libltdl from GNU Libtool, at least version 1.5.6 |
| 71 | |
| 72 | libltdl is used for loading extensions at run-time. It is |
| 73 | available from http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/ . |
| 74 | |
| 75 | - GNU libunistring, at least version 0.9.3 |
| 76 | |
| 77 | libunistring is used for Unicode string operations, such as the |
| 78 | `utf*->string' procedures. It is available from |
| 79 | http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/ . |
| 80 | |
| 81 | - libgc, at least version 7.0 |
| 82 | |
| 83 | libgc (aka. the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector) is the |
| 84 | conservative garbage collector used by Guile. It is available |
| 85 | from http://www.hboehm.info/gc/ . |
| 86 | |
| 87 | - libffi |
| 88 | |
| 89 | libffi provides a "foreign function interface", used by the |
| 90 | `(system foreign)' module. It is available from |
| 91 | http://sourceware.org/libffi/ . |
| 92 | |
| 93 | - pkg-config |
| 94 | |
| 95 | Guile's ./configure script uses pkg-config to discover the correct |
| 96 | compile and link options for libgc and libffi. For this to work, |
| 97 | the `PKG_CONFIG_PATH' environment variable must be set to point to |
| 98 | the places where libgc's and libffi's `.pc' files can be found: |
| 99 | |
| 100 | PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/path/to/libgc/lib/pkgconfig:/path/to/libffi/lib/pkgconfig |
| 101 | |
| 102 | Alternatively, when pkg-config is not installed, you can work around |
| 103 | this by setting some variables as part of the configure |
| 104 | command-line: |
| 105 | |
| 106 | - PKG_CONFIG=true |
| 107 | |
| 108 | - BDW_GC_CFLAGS=<compile flags for picking up libgc headers> |
| 109 | |
| 110 | - BDW_GC_LIBS=<linker flags for picking up the libgc library> |
| 111 | |
| 112 | Note that because you're bypassing all pkg-config checks, you will |
| 113 | also have to specify libffi flags as well: |
| 114 | |
| 115 | - LIBFFI_CFLAGS=<compile flags for picking up libffi headers> |
| 116 | |
| 117 | - LIBFFI_LIBS=<linker flags for picking up the libffi library> |
| 118 | |
| 119 | |
| 120 | Special Instructions For Some Systems ===================================== |
| 121 | |
| 122 | We would like Guile to build on all systems using the simple |
| 123 | instructions above, but it seems that a few systems still need special |
| 124 | treatment. If you can send us fixes for these problems, we'd be |
| 125 | grateful. |
| 126 | |
| 127 | <none yet listed> |
| 128 | |
| 129 | Guile specific flags Accepted by Configure ================================= |
| 130 | |
| 131 | If you run the configure script with no arguments, it should examine |
| 132 | your system and set things up appropriately. However, there are a few |
| 133 | switches specific to Guile you may find useful in some circumstances. |
| 134 | |
| 135 | --without-threads --- Build without thread support |
| 136 | |
| 137 | Build a Guile executable and library that supports multi-threading. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | The default is to enable threading support when your operating |
| 140 | system offsers 'POSIX threads'. When you do not want threading, use |
| 141 | `--without-threads'. |
| 142 | |
| 143 | --enable-deprecated=LEVEL |
| 144 | |
| 145 | Guile may contain features that are `deprecated'. When a feature is |
| 146 | deprecated, it means that it is still there, but that there is a |
| 147 | better way of achieving the same thing, and we'd rather have you use |
| 148 | this better way. This allows us to eventually remove the old |
| 149 | implementation and helps to keep Guile reasonably clean of historic |
| 150 | baggage. |
| 151 | |
| 152 | See the file NEWS for a list of features that are currently |
| 153 | deprecated. Each entry will also tell you what you should replace |
| 154 | your code with. |
| 155 | |
| 156 | To give you some help with this process, and to encourage (OK, |
| 157 | nudge) people to switch to the newer methods, Guile can emit |
| 158 | warnings or errors when you use a deprecated feature. There is |
| 159 | quite a range of possibilities, from being completely silent to |
| 160 | giving errors at link time. What exactly happens is determined both |
| 161 | by the value of the `--enable-deprecated' configuration option when |
| 162 | Guile was built, and by the GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED environment |
| 163 | variable. |
| 164 | |
| 165 | It works like this: |
| 166 | |
| 167 | When Guile has been configured with `--enable-deprecated=no' (or, |
| 168 | equivalently, with `--disable-deprecated') then all deprecated |
| 169 | features are omitted from Guile. You will get "undefined |
| 170 | reference", "variable unbound" or similar errors when you try to |
| 171 | use them. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | When `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' has been specified (for LEVEL not |
| 174 | "no"), LEVEL will be used as the default value of the environment |
| 175 | variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED. A value of "yes" is changed to |
| 176 | "summary" and "shutup" is changed to "no", however. |
| 177 | |
| 178 | When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED has the value "no", nothing special |
| 179 | will happen when a deprecated feature is used. |
| 180 | |
| 181 | When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED has the value "summary", and a |
| 182 | deprecated feature has been used, Guile will print this message at |
| 183 | exit: |
| 184 | |
| 185 | Some deprecated features have been used. Set the environment |
| 186 | variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED to "detailed" and rerun the |
| 187 | program to get more information. Set it to "no" to suppress |
| 188 | this message. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED has the value "detailed", a detailed |
| 191 | warning is emitted immediatly for the first use of a deprecated |
| 192 | feature. |
| 193 | |
| 194 | The default is `--enable-deprecated=yes'. |
| 195 | |
| 196 | In addition to setting GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED in the environment, you |
| 197 | can also use (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) and (debug-disable |
| 198 | 'warn-deprecated) to enable and disable the detailed messaged at run |
| 199 | time. |
| 200 | |
| 201 | Additionally, if your toolchain is new enough, you will receive |
| 202 | warnings at link time if you have a Guile extension that uses |
| 203 | deprecated functions provided by Guile. |
| 204 | |
| 205 | --disable-shared --- Do not build shared libraries. |
| 206 | --disable-static --- Do not build static libraries. |
| 207 | |
| 208 | Normally, both static and shared libraries will be built if your |
| 209 | system supports them. |
| 210 | |
| 211 | --enable-debug-freelist --- Enable freelist debugging. |
| 212 | |
| 213 | This enables a debugging version of scm_cell and scm_double_cell, |
| 214 | and also registers an extra primitive, the setter |
| 215 | `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'. |
| 216 | |
| 217 | Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable the |
| 218 | gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use: |
| 219 | |
| 220 | (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist |
| 221 | (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking |
| 222 | |
| 223 | Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and a |
| 224 | garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can slow |
| 225 | down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to |
| 226 | turn on this extra processing only when necessary. |
| 227 | |
| 228 | --enable-debug-malloc --- Enable malloc debugging. |
| 229 | |
| 230 | Include code for debugging of calls to scm_malloc, scm_realloc, etc. |
| 231 | |
| 232 | It records the number of allocated objects of each kind. This is |
| 233 | useful when searching for memory leaks. |
| 234 | |
| 235 | A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive |
| 236 | `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the |
| 237 | number of objects of that kind. |
| 238 | |
| 239 | --enable-guile-debug --- Include internal debugging functions |
| 240 | --disable-posix --- omit posix interfaces |
| 241 | --disable-networking --- omit networking interfaces |
| 242 | --disable-regex --- omit regular expression interfaces |
| 243 | |
| 244 | |
| 245 | Cross building Guile ===================================================== |
| 246 | |
| 247 | As of Guile 2.0.x, the build process produces a library, libguile-2.0, |
| 248 | along with Guile "object files" containing bytecode to be interpreted by |
| 249 | Guile's virtual machine. The bytecode format depends on the endianness |
| 250 | and word size of the host CPU. |
| 251 | |
| 252 | Thus, when cross building Guile, you first need to configure, build and |
| 253 | install it for your build host. |
| 254 | |
| 255 | Then, you may configure Guile for cross building: |
| 256 | |
| 257 | ./configure --host=i686-pc-cygwin --disable-shared |
| 258 | |
| 259 | A C compiler for the build system is required. If that doesn't suit it |
| 260 | can be specified with the CC_FOR_BUILD variable in the usual way, for |
| 261 | instance: |
| 262 | |
| 263 | ./configure --host=m68k-unknown-linux-gnu CC_FOR_BUILD=/my/local/gcc |
| 264 | |
| 265 | Guile for the build system can be specified similarly with the |
| 266 | GUILE_FOR_BUILD variable, which defaults to whatever `guile' executable |
| 267 | is found in $PATH. It must have the exact same version has the Guile |
| 268 | that you intend to cross-build. |
| 269 | |
| 270 | |
| 271 | Using Guile Without Installing It ========================================= |
| 272 | |
| 273 | The "meta/" subdirectory of the Guile sources contains a script called |
| 274 | "guile" that can be used to run the Guile that has just been built. Note |
| 275 | that this is not the same "guile" as the one that is installed; this |
| 276 | "guile" is a wrapper script that sets up the environment appropriately, |
| 277 | then invokes the Guile binary. |
| 278 | |
| 279 | You may also build external packages against an uninstalled Guile build |
| 280 | tree. The "uninstalled-env" script in the "meta/" subdirectory will set |
| 281 | up an environment with a path including "meta/", a modified dynamic |
| 282 | linker path, a modified PKG_CONFIG_PATH, etc. |
| 283 | |
| 284 | For example, you can enter this environment via invoking |
| 285 | |
| 286 | meta/uninstalled-env bash |
| 287 | |
| 288 | Within that shell, other packages should be able to build against |
| 289 | uninstalled Guile. |
| 290 | |
| 291 | |
| 292 | Installing SLIB =========================================================== |
| 293 | |
| 294 | In order to use SLIB from Guile you basically only need to put the |
| 295 | `slib' directory _in_ one of the directories on Guile's load path. |
| 296 | |
| 297 | The standard installation is: |
| 298 | |
| 299 | 1. Obtain slib from http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SLIB.html |
| 300 | |
| 301 | 2. Put it in Guile's data directory, that is the directory printed when |
| 302 | you type |
| 303 | |
| 304 | guile-config info pkgdatadir |
| 305 | |
| 306 | at the shell prompt. This is normally `/usr/local/share/guile', so the |
| 307 | directory will normally have full path `/usr/local/share/guile/slib'. |
| 308 | |
| 309 | 3. Start guile as a user with write access to the data directory and type |
| 310 | |
| 311 | (use-modules (ice-9 slib)) |
| 312 | |
| 313 | at the Guile prompt. This will generate the slibcat catalog next to |
| 314 | the slib directory. |
| 315 | |
| 316 | SLIB's `require' is provided by the Guile module (ice-9 slib). |
| 317 | |
| 318 | Example: |
| 319 | |
| 320 | (use-modules (ice-9 slib)) |
| 321 | (require 'primes) |
| 322 | (prime? 7) |
| 323 | |
| 324 | |
| 325 | Guile Documentation ================================================== |
| 326 | |
| 327 | The Guile Reference Manual (guile.info) is the primary documentation for |
| 328 | Guile. A copy of the R5RS Scheme specification is included too |
| 329 | (r5rs.info). |
| 330 | |
| 331 | Info format versions of this documentation are installed as part of |
| 332 | the normal build process. The texinfo sources are under the doc |
| 333 | directory, and other formats like Postscript, PDF, DVI or HTML can be |
| 334 | generated from them with Tex and Texinfo tools. |
| 335 | |
| 336 | The doc directory also includes an example-smob subdirectory which has |
| 337 | the example code from the "Defining New Types (Smobs)" chapter of the |
| 338 | reference manual. |
| 339 | |
| 340 | The Guile WWW page is at |
| 341 | |
| 342 | http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html |
| 343 | |
| 344 | It contains a link to the Guile FAQ. |
| 345 | |
| 346 | About This Distribution ============================================== |
| 347 | |
| 348 | Interesting files include: |
| 349 | |
| 350 | - LICENSE, which contains the exact terms of the Guile license. |
| 351 | - COPYING.LESSER, which contains the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. |
| 352 | - COPYING, which contains the terms of the GNU General Public License. |
| 353 | - INSTALL, which contains general instructions for building/installing Guile. |
| 354 | - NEWS, which describes user-visible changes since the last release of Guile. |
| 355 | |
| 356 | Files are usually installed according to the prefix specified to |
| 357 | configure, /usr/local by default. Building and installing gives you: |
| 358 | |
| 359 | Executables, in ${prefix}/bin: |
| 360 | |
| 361 | guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile. With no arguments, this |
| 362 | is a simple interactive Scheme interpreter. It can also be used |
| 363 | as an interpreter for script files; see the NEWS file for details. |
| 364 | guile-config --- a Guile script which provides the information necessary |
| 365 | to link your programs against the Guile library. |
| 366 | guile-snarf --- a script to parse declarations in your C code for |
| 367 | Scheme-visible C functions, Scheme objects to be used by C code, |
| 368 | etc. |
| 369 | |
| 370 | Libraries, in ${prefix}/lib. Depending on the platform and options |
| 371 | given to configure, you may get shared libraries in addition |
| 372 | to or instead of these static libraries: |
| 373 | |
| 374 | libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter, |
| 375 | You can use Guile in your own programs by linking against this. |
| 376 | libguilereadline.a --- an object library containing glue code for the |
| 377 | GNU readline library. |
| 378 | |
| 379 | libguile-srfi-*.a --- various SRFI support libraries |
| 380 | |
| 381 | Header files, in ${prefix}/include: |
| 382 | |
| 383 | libguile.h, guile/gh.h, libguile/*.h --- for libguile. |
| 384 | guile-readline/readline.h --- for guile-readline. |
| 385 | |
| 386 | Support files, in ${prefix}/share/guile/<version>: |
| 387 | |
| 388 | ice-9/* --- run-time support for Guile: the module system, |
| 389 | read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other infrastructure. |
| 390 | oop/* --- the Guile Object-Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) |
| 391 | scripts/* --- executable modules, i.e., scheme programs that can be both |
| 392 | called as an executable from the shell, and loaded and used as a |
| 393 | module from scheme code. See scripts/README for more info. |
| 394 | srfi/* --- SRFI support modules. See srfi/README for more info. |
| 395 | |
| 396 | Automake macros, in ${prefix}/share/aclocal: |
| 397 | |
| 398 | guile.m4 |
| 399 | |
| 400 | Documentation in Info format, in ${prefix}/info: |
| 401 | |
| 402 | guile --- Guile reference manual. |
| 403 | |
| 404 | guile-tut --- Guile tutorial. |
| 405 | |
| 406 | GOOPS --- GOOPS reference manual. |
| 407 | |
| 408 | r5rs --- Revised(5) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. |
| 409 | |
| 410 | |
| 411 | The Guile source tree is laid out as follows: |
| 412 | |
| 413 | libguile: |
| 414 | The Guile Scheme interpreter --- both the object library |
| 415 | for you to link with your programs, and the executable you can run. |
| 416 | ice-9: Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure. |
| 417 | guile-config: |
| 418 | Source for the guile-config script. |
| 419 | guile-readline: |
| 420 | The glue code for using GNU readline with Guile. This |
| 421 | will be build when configure can find a recent enough readline |
| 422 | library on your system. |
| 423 | doc: Documentation (see above). |
| 424 | |
| 425 | Git Repository Access ================================================ |
| 426 | |
| 427 | Guile's source code is stored in a Git repository at Savannah. Anyone |
| 428 | can access it using `git-clone' from one of the following URLs: |
| 429 | |
| 430 | git://git.sv.gnu.org/guile.git |
| 431 | http://git.sv.gnu.org/r/guile.git |
| 432 | |
| 433 | Developers with a Savannah SSH account can also access it from: |
| 434 | |
| 435 | ssh://git.sv.gnu.org/srv/git/guile.git |
| 436 | |
| 437 | The repository can also be browsed on-line at the following address: |
| 438 | |
| 439 | http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git |
| 440 | |
| 441 | For more information on Git, please see: |
| 442 | |
| 443 | http://git.or.cz/ |
| 444 | |
| 445 | Please send problem reports to <bug-guile@gnu.org>. |