1 !!! This is not a Guile release; it is a source tree retrieved via
2 Git or as a nightly snapshot at some random time after the
3 Guile 1.8 release. If this were a Guile release, you would not see
4 this message. !!! [fixme: zonk on release]
6 This is a 1.9 development version of Guile, Project GNU's extension
7 language library. Guile is an interpreter for Scheme, packaged as a
8 library that you can link into your applications to give them their
9 own scripting language. Guile will eventually support other languages
10 as well, giving users of Guile-based applications a choice of
13 Guile versions with an odd middle number, i.e. 1.9.* are unstable
14 development versions. Even middle numbers indicate stable versions.
15 This has been the case since the 1.3.* series.
17 The next stable release will likely be version 2.0.0.
19 Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
21 See the LICENSE file for the specific terms that apply to Guile.
24 Additional INSTALL instructions ===========================================
26 Generic instructions for configuring and compiling Guile can be found
27 in the INSTALL file. Guile specific information and configure options
28 can be found below, including instructions for installing SLIB.
30 Guile depends on the following external libraries.
37 It will also use the libreadline library if it is available. For each
38 of these there is a corresponding --with-XXX-prefix option that you
39 can use when invoking ./configure, if you have these libraries
40 installed in a location other than the standard places (/usr and
43 These options are provided by the Gnulib `havelib' module, and details
44 of how they work are documented in `Searching for Libraries' in the
45 Gnulib manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/manual). The extent
46 to which they work on a given OS depends on whether that OS supports
47 encoding full library path names in executables (aka `rpath'). Also
48 note that using these options, and hence hardcoding full library path
49 names (where that is supported), makes it impossible to later move the
50 built executables and libraries to an installation location other than
51 the one that was specified at build time.
53 Another possible approach is to set CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS on the
54 configure command-line, so that they include -I options for all the
55 non-standard places where you have installed header files and -L
56 options for all the non-standard places where you have installed
57 libraries. This will allow configure and make to find those headers
58 and libraries during the build. E.g.:
60 ../configure [...] CPPFLAGS='-I/my/include' LDFLAGS='-L/my/lib'
62 The locations found will not be hardcoded into the build executables and
63 libraries, so with this approach you will probably also need to set
64 LD_LIBRARY_PATH correspondingly, to allow Guile to find the necessary
65 libraries again at runtime.
68 Required External Packages ================================================
70 Guile requires the following external packages:
72 - GNU MP, at least version 4.1
74 GNU MP is used for bignum arithmetic. It is available from
77 - libltdl from GNU Libtool, at least version 1.5.6
79 libltdl is used for loading extensions at run-time. It is
80 available from http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/ .
84 libunistring is used for Unicode string operations, such as the
85 `utf*->string' procedures. It is available from
86 http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/ .
88 - libgc, at least version 7.0
90 libgc (aka. the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector) is the
91 conservative garbage collector used by Guile. It is available
92 from http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/ .
96 Guile's ./configure script uses pkg-config to discover the correct
97 compile and link options for libgc. If you don't have pkg-config
98 installed, or you have a version of libgc that doesn't provide a
99 .pc file, you can work around this by setting some variables as
100 part of the configure command-line:
104 - BDW_GC_CFLAGS=<compile flags for picking up libgc headers>
106 - BDW_GC_LIBS=<linker flags for picking up the libgc library>
109 Special Instructions For Some Systems =====================================
111 We would like Guile to build on all systems using the simple
112 instructions above, but it seems that a few systems still need special
113 treatment. If you can send us fixes for these problems, we'd be
118 Guile specific flags Accepted by Configure =================================
120 If you run the configure script with no arguments, it should examine
121 your system and set things up appropriately. However, there are a few
122 switches specific to Guile you may find useful in some circumstances.
124 --without-threads --- Build without thread support
126 Build a Guile executable and library that supports multi-threading.
128 The default is to enable threading support when your operating
129 system offsers 'POSIX threads'. When you do not want threading, use
132 --enable-deprecated=LEVEL
134 Guile may contain features that are `deprecated'. When a feature is
135 deprecated, it means that it is still there, but that there is a
136 better way of achieving the same thing, and we'd rather have you use
137 this better way. This allows us to eventually remove the old
138 implementation and helps to keep Guile reasonably clean of historic
141 Deprecated features are considered harmful; using them is likely a
142 bug. See below for the related notion of `discouraged' features,
143 which are OK but have fallen out of favor.
145 See the file NEWS for a list of features that are currently
146 deprecated. Each entry will also tell you what you should replace
149 To give you some help with this process, and to encourage (OK,
150 nudge) people to switch to the newer methods, Guile can emit
151 warnings or errors when you use a deprecated feature. There is
152 quite a range of possibilities, from being completely silent to
153 giving errors at link time. What exactly happens is determined both
154 by the value of the `--enable-deprecated' configuration option when
155 Guile was built, and by the GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED environment
160 When Guile has been configured with `--enable-deprecated=no' (or,
161 equivalently, with `--disable-deprecated') then all deprecated
162 features are omitted from Guile. You will get "undefined
163 reference", "variable unbound" or similar errors when you try to
166 When `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' has been specified (for LEVEL not
167 "no"), LEVEL will be used as the default value of the environment
168 variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED. A value of "yes" is changed to
169 "summary" and "shutup" is changed to "no", however.
171 When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED has the value "no", nothing special
172 will happen when a deprecated feature is used.
174 When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED has the value "summary", and a
175 deprecated feature has been used, Guile will print this message at
178 Some deprecated features have been used. Set the environment
179 variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED to "detailed" and rerun the
180 program to get more information. Set it to "no" to suppress
183 When GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED has the value "detailed", a detailed
184 warning is emitted immediatly for the first use of a deprecated
187 The default is `--enable-deprecated=yes'.
189 In addition to setting GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED in the environment, you
190 can also use (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) and (debug-disable
191 'warn-deprecated) to enable and disable the detailed messaged at run
194 --disable-discouraged
196 In addition to deprecated features, Guile can also contain things
197 that are merely `discouraged'. It is OK to continue to use these
198 features in old code, but new code should avoid them since there are
201 There is nothing wrong with a discouraged feature per se, but they
202 might have strange names, or be non-standard, for example. Avoiding
203 them will make your code better.
205 --disable-shared --- Do not build shared libraries.
206 --disable-static --- Do not build static libraries.
208 Normally, both static and shared libraries will be built if your
209 system supports them.
211 --enable-debug-freelist --- Enable freelist debugging.
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!'.
217 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable the
218 gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
220 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
221 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
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.
228 --enable-debug-malloc --- Enable malloc debugging.
230 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_malloc, scm_realloc, etc.
232 It records the number of allocated objects of each kind. This is
233 useful when searching for memory leaks.
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.
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
245 Cross building Guile =====================================================
247 As of guile-1.5.x, the build process uses compiled C files for
248 snarfing, and (indirectly, through libtool) for linking, and uses the
249 guile executable for generating documentation.
251 When cross building guile, you first need to configure, build and
252 install guile for your build host.
254 Then, you may configure guile for cross building, eg:
256 ./configure --host=i686-pc-cygwin --disable-shared
258 A C compiler for the build system is required. The default is
259 "PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH cc". If that doesn't suit it can be specified
260 with the CC_FOR_BUILD variable in the usual way, for instance
262 ./configure --host=m68k-unknown-linux-gnu CC_FOR_BUILD=/my/local/gcc
264 Guile for the build system can be specified similarly with the
265 GUILE_FOR_BUILD variable, it defaults to just "guile".
268 Using Guile Without Installing It =========================================
270 The "meta/" subdirectory of the Guile sources contains a script called
271 "guile" that can be used to run the Guile that has just been built. Note
272 that this is not the same "guile" as the one that is installed; this
273 "guile" is a wrapper script that sets up the environment appropriately,
274 then invokes the Guile binary.
276 You may also build external packages against an uninstalled Guile build
277 tree. The "uninstalled-env" script in the "meta/" subdirectory will set
278 up an environment with a path including "meta/", a modified dynamic
279 linker path, a modified PKG_CONFIG_PATH, etc.
281 For example, you can enter this environment via invoking
283 meta/uninstalled-env bash
285 Within that shell, other packages should be able to build against
289 Installing SLIB ===========================================================
291 In order to use SLIB from Guile you basically only need to put the
292 `slib' directory _in_ one of the directories on Guile's load path.
294 The standard installation is:
296 1. Obtain slib from http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SLIB.html
298 2. Put it in Guile's data directory, that is the directory printed when
301 guile-config info pkgdatadir
303 at the shell prompt. This is normally `/usr/local/share/guile', so the
304 directory will normally have full path `/usr/local/share/guile/slib'.
306 3. Start guile as a user with write access to the data directory and type
308 (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
310 at the Guile prompt. This will generate the slibcat catalog next to
313 SLIB's `require' is provided by the Guile module (ice-9 slib).
317 (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
322 Guile Documentation ==================================================
324 If you've never used Scheme before, then the Guile Tutorial
325 (guile-tut.info) is a good starting point. The Guile Reference Manual
326 (guile.info) is the primary documentation for Guile. A copy of the
327 R5RS Scheme specification is included too (r5rs.info).
329 Info format versions of this documentation are installed as part of
330 the normal build process. The texinfo sources are under the doc
331 directory, and other formats like Postscript, PDF, DVI or HTML can be
332 generated from them with Tex and Texinfo tools.
334 The doc directory also includes an example-smob subdirectory which has
335 the example code from the "Defining New Types (Smobs)" chapter of the
338 The Guile WWW page is at
340 http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html
342 It contains a link to the Guile FAQ.
344 About This Distribution ==============================================
346 Interesting files include:
348 - LICENSE, which contains the exact terms of the Guile license.
349 - COPYING.LESSER, which contains the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.
350 - COPYING, which contains the terms of the GNU General Public License.
351 - INSTALL, which contains general instructions for building/installing Guile.
352 - NEWS, which describes user-visible changes since the last release of Guile.
354 Files are usually installed according to the prefix specified to
355 configure, /usr/local by default. Building and installing gives you:
357 Executables, in ${prefix}/bin:
359 guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile. With no arguments, this
360 is a simple interactive Scheme interpreter. It can also be used
361 as an interpreter for script files; see the NEWS file for details.
362 guile-config --- a Guile script which provides the information necessary
363 to link your programs against the Guile library.
364 guile-snarf --- a script to parse declarations in your C code for
365 Scheme-visible C functions, Scheme objects to be used by C code,
368 Libraries, in ${prefix}/lib. Depending on the platform and options
369 given to configure, you may get shared libraries in addition
370 to or instead of these static libraries:
372 libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter,
373 You can use Guile in your own programs by linking against this.
374 libguilereadline.a --- an object library containing glue code for the
375 GNU readline library.
377 libguile-srfi-*.a --- various SRFI support libraries
379 Header files, in ${prefix}/include:
381 libguile.h, guile/gh.h, libguile/*.h --- for libguile.
382 guile-readline/readline.h --- for guile-readline.
384 Support files, in ${prefix}/share/guile/<version>:
386 ice-9/* --- run-time support for Guile: the module system,
387 read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other infrastructure.
388 oop/* --- the Guile Object-Oriented Programming System (GOOPS)
389 scripts/* --- executable modules, i.e., scheme programs that can be both
390 called as an executable from the shell, and loaded and used as a
391 module from scheme code. See scripts/README for more info.
392 srfi/* --- SRFI support modules. See srfi/README for more info.
394 Automake macros, in ${prefix}/share/aclocal:
398 Documentation in Info format, in ${prefix}/info:
400 guile --- Guile reference manual.
402 guile-tut --- Guile tutorial.
404 GOOPS --- GOOPS reference manual.
406 r5rs --- Revised(5) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme.
409 The Guile source tree is laid out as follows:
412 The Guile Scheme interpreter --- both the object library
413 for you to link with your programs, and the executable you can run.
414 ice-9: Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure.
416 Source for the guile-config script.
418 The glue code for using GNU readline with Guile. This
419 will be build when configure can find a recent enough readline
420 library on your system.
421 doc: Documentation (see above).
423 Git Repository Access ================================================
425 Guile's source code is stored in a Git repository at Savannah. Anyone
426 can access it using `git-clone' from one of the following URLs:
428 git://git.sv.gnu.org/guile.git
429 http://git.sv.gnu.org/r/guile.git
431 Developers with a Savannah SSH account can also access it from:
433 ssh://git.sv.gnu.org/srv/git/guile.git
435 The repository can also be browsed on-line at the following address:
437 http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git
439 For more information on Git, please see:
443 Please send problem reports to <bug-guile@gnu.org>.