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 1.3.4 release. This is version 1.3.5 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. 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 There is a plan to distribute the reference manual with guile-core, with much of the text generated from the docstrings in the sources. The docstrings are likely to be more up-to-date than the reference manual at present (see libguile/guile-procedures.txt which is generated by the build process). 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. - COPYING, which describes the terms under which you may redistribute Guile, and explains that there is no warranty. 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/: 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@sourceware.cygnus.com by sending a message to guile-cvs-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com. Even better, you can get daily digests of these commit messages by sending a message to guile-cvs-digest-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com. If you want to subscribe an e-mail address other than the one that appears in your From: header, say foo@bar.com, send a mail note to guile-cvs-subscribe-foo=bar.com@sourceware.cygnus.com. Obtaining Guile ====================================================== The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/guile/guile-1.3.4.tar.gz The mailing list `guile@sourceware.cygnus.com' carries discussions, questions, and often answers, about Guile. To subscribe, send mail to guile-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com. Of course, please send bug reports (and fixes!) to bug-guile@gnu.org. Note that one address is @sourceware.cygnus.com, and the other is at @gnu.org.