[gambit-list] The challenge of Scheme for Windows

Marc Feeley feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Thu Dec 6 21:19:55 EST 2007


On 6-Dec-07, at 7:08 PM, Bob McIsaac wrote:

> Hi:
>
> I enjoy using Gambit on Linux but have no luck doing same on windows.
> I tried v401 with openwatcom.  It failed because the platform- 
> dependent
> header files need to be somehow configured.

I'll take a look at it.

>  On v410 prebuilt, gsi works
> but there is an apparent linkage error with gsc.  Perhaps there is  
> some
> issue with my win32 environment.

The problem seems to be that your installation directory is  
misconfigured.  Can you try these commands in a MSYS shell:

    % gsi -e '(pp (path-expand "~~"))'
    % which gsi

Might there be a space or a special character in the path?  Actually,  
are you using the MinGW version or the Microsoft Visual Studio version?

> This is not to dis Gambit, Chicken Scheme presents the same sort of
> Windows headaches.  It might be less challenging if Scheme for
> windows relied only on a single free win32 compiler such as  
> Openwatcom.

Sure but which one!?  I would think the gcc which comes with MinGW is  
the most widely used free C compiler on Windows.  Gcc is a good choice  
also because the Gambit sources can take advantage of some of gcc's  
extensions, such as computed gotos.  In the past I had considered  
bundling a C compiler with Gambit (such as LCC, TCC, and OpenWatcom),  
but it is not simple to satisfy the licenses and it is non-trivial to  
determine which files need to be distributed with the C compiler (e.g.  
C preprocessor, header files, ...).  Even if many users would be  
content with a specific C compiler being installed along with Gambit,  
there are other "power" users who want to be able to use the C  
compiler that they use everyday for all their projects.  In the end I  
think it is best to allow the end user to choose the C compiler they  
want.  Note that the Gambit interpreter can still be used even if no C  
compiler is available.

> Then there would not be the extra complexity of setting up Mingw or
> Cygwin.

Maybe you should talk to those folks and convince them to simplify  
their installation procedure, for example by distributing an installer  
for dummies (I always have a hard time installing MinGW because  
several pieces have to be installed).  Cygwin is a little better, but  
it could be even simpler.

Marc

P.S. next time could you please submit your bug report on Gambit's bug  
tracking system.




More information about the Gambit-list mailing list