[gambit-list] A newbie's question

Guillaume Cartier gcartier at jazzscheme.org
Sun Jul 8 09:22:21 EDT 2007


Christian von Essen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm relative new to scheme and chose gambit because of its performance
> and its debugger over the other implementations. I'm impressed by both
> features. Especially the debugger is pretty much unique in the scheme
> systems till under development. There was on this list a discussion
> about (a) a module system for gambit and (b) a package distribution
> facility with packages called "gems". I wanted to ask about the current
> development status of both. Was the package system abandoned for "snow"
> system? Has the development of the module system come to a halt?
>
> Personally, I think that a gambit specific package distribution system
> would help gambit's development a lot, as I am not good enough to hack
> gambit directly, but probably good enough to write a package.
>
> I envision something like chicken's eggs, of course.
>
> But before such a sytem can become useful, a module system is almost
> required. I read about gambit's namespaces (why are they not documented,
> anyway?), and as others have stated, it provides a base on which a
> module system could be written. Is there any plan to do that?
>
> As we all now, the R6RS process is ongoing. Does gambit plan to adopt
> the standard? If not, could you please shortly explain why?
>
> A lot of question, and I hope that someone finds time to answer them.
>
> Christian von Essen
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> Gambit-list at iro.umontreal.ca
> https://webmail.iro.umontreal.ca/mailman/listinfo/gambit-list
>
>
>   
I am not sure if my post will not complexify the 'module system for 
Scheme' situation further, but here goes...

As some know, I am in the process of porting JazzScheme, an existing 
Scheme inspired system to Gambit. One very important piece of this port 
is a module system I am finishing writing in the next few weeks and on 
which everything else will stand. The module system is pretty close to 
the R6RS libraries but takes a very pragmatic approach to all the 
complexity of separating syntax and runtime. It is also designed to be 
easily portable to other Scheme systems as I want JazzScheme to be able 
to run on any Scheme system.

If there is interest, I could make the source code available,

Guillaume Cartier



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