[gambit-list] DrScheme and GambitC

William Cook wcook at cs.utexas.edu
Mon Sep 1 11:56:37 EDT 2008


There is an Eclipse plugin for Scheme, called SchemeWay.
http://schemeway.sourceforge.net/

I have used it for a while, and it is OK. The big problem with
it, and all other Scheme development environments that I know,
is that they do not have anything that I would call true
visual debugging capabilities. This is also true of Dr. Scheme.
I don't know emacs so I cannot comment on how it interfaces
with the Gambit text-based debugger. The only thing I
know of is JazzScheme, which is based on Gambit and may
be very cool when it is released.
http://www.jazzscheme.org/

As a result, I have been working on a new Eclipse plugin based
on the Eclipse Dynamic Language Toolkit (DLTK)
http://www.eclipse.org/dltk/
The DLTK supports DBGp, a reasonable debug protocol. I
have hacked into Gambit to implement a DBGp stub and
connect it to Eclipse. The result is a debugger for
Scheme that feels a lot like familiar Java or C# debuggers.
I hope to release an alpha version soon.

I've asked here if anybody wants to help, but nobody
has expressed any interest. I think that Eclipse+Scheme
could bring scheme to a much wider audience. Its a shame
that Scheme, despite (because of?) its long history, has
not kept up with modern development environments now
available for Python, Ruby, and Perl.

William Cook
UT Austin Computer Sciences


Nick wrote:
> David Rush,
>> The point of DrScheme language levels is that the PLT group have
>> implemented several different compilers that target the PLT run-time.
>> IIRC, this also includes Java and JavaScript compilers. While I am
>> unaware of any a priori reasons why a gambit-compatible set of
>> libraries couldn't be implemented using the PLT run-time, I'd be very
>> sceptical about the marginal utility of such a package. I mean, we
>> already *have* Gambit, and for IDEs, well gambit-mode in emacs works
>> very well, and ISTR the Gambit team itself developing its own IDE
>> (someone correct me here).
>>
>> david rush
>>   
> Thank you, David. Actually, I tried to grok emacs several times, but 
> ...ugh :-) That's because I began to look towards different IDEs with 
> more conventional user interface for windows users such as Visual 
> Studio, Intellij IDEA, DrScheme... Do you think Emacs is superior?
> 
> Best regards,
> Nick
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