[gambit-list] Alexpander improvements and gambit error locations

Álvaro Castro-Castilla alvaro.castro.castilla at gmail.com
Wed Dec 19 06:56:29 EST 2012


Hi,

I've managed to get Alexpander in a quite usable state, I'm happy with it.
It's fast and stable, and I managed to make keywords work, so I can use
functions defined with ##define in DSSSL extensions, and namespaces for
modules (I couldn't do these with psyntax). I also can mix low-level
macros, in a second stage, which is good enough, since these are mostly
used for very specific stuff related to FFI code generation and compilation
helpers. High-level syntax is done in syntax-rules in my code.

What I see as a main issue with Alexpander, however, are code locations of
errors. Specially, those related to LET and other basic forms which are
expanded to fundamental lambdas. That turns the code around all the time
making it more difficult to locate the original source of the error.

The basic compilation process involves generating intermediate files,
expanded with Alexpander and then compiling them with Gambit.

I believe that if this is improved (at least avoiding alexpander expansion
of let/let*/letrec forms), the resulting syntax system is satisfactory. It
could even be made to be compatible with Blackhole's module system,
alghouth my alternative allows me the finer control for cross-compilation
(Android) that I couldn't achieve in Blackhole after some time hacking it.

Any ideas for improving this? I've tried hacking Alexpander removing the
redefinitions and making them stubs, but no luck. I'll dive further into
Alexpander if I don't find any other solution.
What are the consecuences of expanding let/let*/letrec, etc, to lambdas
besides code locations? (am I missing any optimizations or some structure
used by Gambit for better code generation?)

Thanks a lot.
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