[gambit-list] getting started with gambit source code
Christian Jaeger
christian at pflanze.mine.nu
Tue Jun 3 00:42:31 EDT 2008
Andrew I. Schein wrote:
> Hi -
>
> I recently downloaded the source for gambit v4.2.8 with the idea of
> looking at how it fits together. I am a little bit baffled... there
> are quite a few (~33) files with a "_" prefix that seem to be
> generated C code as well as 9 normal looking C files.
>
> Can someone provide pointers on the tool that generates the C
The tool is the Gambit compiler, gsc; when bootstrapping (make
bootstrap), a gsc binary is generated and placed as "gsc-comp" binary in
the toplevel directory of the sources.
> or more
> generally about where to start in looking at the source?
>
For those autogenerated C files, there is a corresponding .scm file from
which it has been compiled. Look at the .scm file.
Check the wiki for a few insights into the system, as well as a few
papers from Marc (check his homepage and/or the mailing list archives,
for example "Paper on the compiler"; there's a search form for the
mailing list on http://scheme.mine.nu/gambit/). You should try to get a
general understanding of Gambit, first, like how namespaces are being
handled, what define-type does (it's the same as define-structure, but
not all features which are being used by the Gambit sources are
documented in the manual).
Christian.
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