[gambit-list] Using Snow from Gambit?

Paul Onions wibble37 at mac.com
Mon Mar 2 15:25:59 EST 2009


On 2009-03-02 12:44:41 +0000, Adrien Piérard <pierarda at iro.umontreal.ca> said:

> You don't run snow in gambit, it's the converse.
> 
> You write your package with portable R4RS code and snow code (package*
> foo) and so on.
> Then, you run "snow ./package.scm" and you're done.
> Feel like eating worms? "SNOW_HOST=csi ./package.scm".
> And so on.

Ahh, now I begin to see the "big picture", thanks.

So Snow can be thought of as an implementation of Scheme that 
incorporates a package system but uses another pre-existing Scheme 
implementation to provide it's basic language functionality. You can 
right toplevel programs and scripts in Snow, but you do not have access 
to a REPL. It sits atop the pre-existing Scheme like an application -- 
it doesn't integrate into it.

Was it developed with some specific kind of applications in mind? Or 
was it perhaps a test vehicle to develop the packaging system? I can't 
quite understand its "raison d'etre". Does it have much of a userbase?

Thanks,
Paul





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