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Re: [Snow-users-list] some questions about snow References:
by alexander.sepp＠student.uni-augsburg.de 19 Mar '07

19 Mar '07

<87fy8de4i7.fsf_-_(a)lalune.planetill.net> <5868D729-CDBB-4C33-9C47-CC5D014AAF83(a)iro.umontreal.ca> From: Alexander Sepp <alexander.sepp(a)student.uni-augsburg.de> Date: 19 Mar 2007 17:47:02 +0100 In-Reply-To: <5868D729-CDBB-4C33-9C47-CC5D014AAF83(a)iro.umontreal.ca> Message-ID: <87y7lti3jt.fsf_-_(a)lalune.planetill.net> Lines: 58 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Marc Feeley <feeley(a)iro.umontreal.ca> writes: hi, > > * Signature handling > > > > afaics, every file in a snowball archive has it's own signature. > > why is this the case? wouldn't it be cleaner (and simpler) to > > provide the signature over the complete snowball archive itself? the > > problem is, that if i can not verify the origin of a tarball, i do > > not even want to untar it. > > The snowball structure is designed so that a package's parts can be > contributed, and signed, by different people. For example someone > may be working on the Bigloo port while someone else is working on a > Gambit port. The maintainer can then collect these (separately > signed) parts and just drop them into the package directory, then > upload the package. Shouldn't this be handled by a source code management tool? I do not want a cert for each developer contributing to snow. Imagine you would have a cert from each developer contributed once to the linux kernel... It should be enough to trust the maintainer. If the maintainer is not trustworthy then the snowball is useless anyway. While at it: Is there a repository one can track changes made to the core framework? > > i did some quick tests with the digest package. i noticed a > > performance drop of 2/3 using gambit compared to the version in > > ~~lib/digest.scm (delivered with the gambit system). how do i get > > the performance back, still using the snowball? > > That is odd. There is no reason why Snow packages should run slower. > I will investigate. Where you able to reproduce my observations? > The "snow-XXX" name is used when there is a possible name conflict > with an XXX operation on some Scheme system. Often snow-XXX and XXX > are related operations, but they may have slightly different > semantics (accepted number of arguments, result in special cases, > signaling of errors, etc). > > I don't particularly like the "snow-" prefix and I hope that with > time the Snow packages can deprecate those names when the various > Scheme systems adopt a consistent semantics. A good example is fx+, > fx*, etc which should be standardized by R6RS. Yes, cluttering the core language is not a good idea at all. Maybe it would be better to not support _all_ scheme systems out there. i would prefer quality over quantity. alex

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Re: [Snow-users-list] Suggestion and seeking advice
by Marc Feeley 16 Mar '07

16 Mar '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12-Mar-07, at 12:27 PM, Ryan Newton wrote: > That sounds good. So ideally, then, there would be a form where > someone can submit compatibility reports? Complete with complete > snow-version, implementation-version, package version? Who likes to fill out reports? I think a free-form system (such as a Wiki) combined with a basic template might be better. However a form would have the advantage that the results could be tallied automatically and presented by the package browser. Marc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iD8DBQFF+ft4//V9Zc2T/v4RAlGuAJ9PdH/OGW12iMRllPshR8zWmDBhcACfUCL1 k622wJsW5mNKm7VybNxsWIc= =1biX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Snow-users-list] some questions about snow
by Marc Feeley 16 Mar '07

16 Mar '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 These are all very important issues... On 10-Mar-07, at 6:12 AM, Alexander Sepp wrote: > > hi, > > i'm new now to scheme, and of course snow. after fiddling around with > snow and esp. gambit a while, i stumbled over some things that keep me > thinking and grumbling. So i have few questions regarding the > scheme now > framework: > > * Signature handling > > afaics, every file in a snowball archive has it's own signature. > why is > this the case? wouldn't it be cleaner (and simpler) to provide the > signature over the complete snowball archive itself? the problem is, > that if i can not verify the origin of a tarball, i do not even > want to > untar it. The snowball structure is designed so that a package's parts can be contributed, and signed, by different people. For example someone may be working on the Bigloo port while someone else is working on a Gambit port. The maintainer can then collect these (separately signed) parts and just drop them into the package directory, then upload the package. > > * Performance > > i did some quick tests with the digest package. i noticed > a performance drop of 2/3 using gambit compared to the version in > ~~lib/digest.scm (delivered with the gambit system). how do i get the > performance back, still using the snowball? That is odd. There is no reason why Snow packages should run slower. I will investigate. > > * snow-* namespace > > if i want to use fixnum arithmetic, i have to write (snow-fxadd a b); > wouldn't be (fxadd a b) simpler and maybe confrom to the upcoming > R6RS? > the same holds for (snow-u8vector...). latter is from my point of view > another workaround for various duplicated srfi's? The "snow-XXX" name is used when there is a possible name conflict with an XXX operation on some Scheme system. Often snow-XXX and XXX are related operations, but they may have slightly different semantics (accepted number of arguments, result in special cases, signaling of errors, etc). I don't particularly like the "snow-" prefix and I hope that with time the Snow packages can deprecate those names when the various Scheme systems adopt a consistent semantics. A good example is fx+, fx*, etc which should be standardized by R6RS. > i hope these questions are not totally superfluous and already > answered. i think the scheme now framework is a very clean approach to > provide the fundamental base libraries needed by todays > applications. i > also appreciate to see native scheme implementions of crypto > algorithms. normally, there are only questionable ffi wrappers > provided. Thanks. It was a lot of work to write those algorithms in Scheme. The goal of course was to have a 100% pure Scheme implementation, so that snowman could do package signing and certificate management without requiring external tools (allowing one to run Snow on embedded systems for example). Marc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iD8DBQFF+fn6//V9Zc2T/v4RAgamAJ9uP0ITDTApE0XPSlRxGmDXwV4Y2wCfekVU OCBf2EMItv0yDEw4LQ0+Q5k= =PZvk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Snow-users-list] SXML/SSAX
by Julian Graham 15 Mar '07

15 Mar '07

(Oops -- should've sent this to the list, not just Marc.) I sent an email to the SSAX mailing list and got the following response from Oleg Kiselyov, the author: "I guess more like `hands off'... I try to keep the core SSAX relatively portable. [...] It's up to the developers of a particular Scheme system and its community to decide how to treat SSAX." I take that to mean that Snow people should handle the port... > I agree fully. > > Now who does the actual work of porting it to Snow? This is actually > a general question that applies to any big existing non-Snow > package. I think the author or maintainer of the package should be > given the opportunity to maintain the Snow package, out of respect > for their authorship and also because it will simplify maintenance > (no hierarchy of maintainers). If the current author/maintainer is > not interested then we can find someone to do the porting work.

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patch for configure POSIX conditionals compatibility
by Julian Graham 14 Mar '07

14 Mar '07

So, Ubuntu ships with /bin/sh set to a shell I'd never heard of before called "dash," which doesn't seem to like the '==' test for [ ] conditionals. A single '=' is equivalent and apparently more POSIX-friendly (dash seems to like it, at least). Find attached a patch to replace all the == in configure with =. Cheers, Julian

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no more grep
by Thien-Thi Nguyen 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

greetings, to reduce external dependency on grep(1), i submit for consideration in a future release the attached patch to the configure script of snow-generic v1.0.0 that uses sed(1) only. btw, i have nothing against grep, personally. but it is not necessary here. thi _________________________________

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Copyright and License
by Phil Bewig 13 Mar '07

13 Mar '07

Does Snow impose any copyright or license on contributed code? Can I contribute copyrighted code licensed under GPL, or LGPL, or MIT, or any of the other open-source licenses? Can documentation be covered by a Creative Commons or FDL license?

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Re: [Snow-users-list] Suggestion and seeking advice
by Ryan Newton 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

> e) to change > the package compatibility meta-data in the package. It is better for > the compatibility information to be contributed by the users of the > package. They can report which combination of Scheme system, > version, compilation options, Snow implementation, etc are required. That sounds good. So ideally, then, there would be a form where users can submit compatibility reports? Complete with complete snow- version, implementation-version, package version? -Ryan

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Song about Lisp
by Marc Feeley 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Brad Lucier sent me this amusing song about Lisp: http://bc.tech.coop/ blog/070301.html The song even mentions snow(flakes)! Marc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iD8DBQFF9XUd//V9Zc2T/v4RAlwyAJ9m1qNY+QgaQlnEJsoZg4/VWd0BogCfZnRB vMSuZkXGrBF1ziEclXGVGzI= =0ec1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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snow packages
by Aycan iRiCAN 12 Mar '07

12 Mar '07

Hi, I prepared three snow packages from Guillaume Germain's mod-gambit (html, url and mod-gambit). http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~germaing/mod_gambit.scm We're thinking of migrating our CL based web framework to scheme. However I couldn't decide weather I should upload these packages via snowfort or not. I haven't wrote any tests for this packages but I want to share them. Any ideas? Mr. Guillaume, what is your opinion? Best Regards, -- Aycan iRiCAN KOR Bilişim Teknolojileri http://www.core.gen.tr/

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