[gambit-list] Several questions about gambit

Chris Müller ruunsmail at gmail.com
Thu Jan 10 05:08:01 EST 2013


Hey :)

I've currently started to learn/use scheme for some experiments in 
machine learning and chose gambit for its close relation to c. I would 
like to share my first impression and misunderstandings with you and 
have some questions which maybe also help other newcomers.

1) I managed to compile my scheme library into a dynamic loadable unit 
that i use in some scripts for the gsi interpreter. Does anyone know how 
i can specify some kind
of loadpath (e.g. via ENV, commandline flag) for the interpreter where 
(load "...") searches scheme modules? (Or any other common alternatives)
Currently i'm always using relative paths through (string-append 
(path-directory (this-source-file)) "/" "module") based on the file 
location itself.

2) I've struggled in the beginning very much with the usage of gsc and 
gsi. My first step is often calling the --help flag of the command 
itself. Unfortanetely, i haven't found
any useful option like "gsc --help" or "gsi --help" that provides a 
short summary about its common command flags. The man page and the -:h 
flag provides some information
about runtime configuration. But it seems a little incomplete. 
(Especially for compiling scheme files to .o1). It would be a great help 
to extend this summary with the mentioned options from the documentation 
in "/usr/share/gambc" or "info gambit-c". (If i missed something 
interesting, just let me know)

3) For my own purpose i'm currently implementing a trivial testing 
library similar to rspec and would like to share this. The wiki 
mentioned two package systems (Black Hole and Snow). I like to ask if 
there exists some preferences using a specific system and which one do 
you suggest (or is there even one of them deprecated?)

4) Do you know a good scheme alternative for the printf command in c? 
I've currently only used (print ..) and (display ..) which worked, but i 
would also prefer some formated outputs for the future :)

5) I have currently no clue about gambit overall capabilities. But i 
guess it already belongs to the most matured scheme implementation due 
to its older age. I'm especially
interested in its foreign interface to C and it would be interesting to 
know if its possible to bind bigger libraries like Glib/GTK/Cairo 
flawlessly. (Or does there exists some
known limitations that could lead to obvious problems).

Hope you nevermind this trivial questions that helps me a little in 
gambits scheme landscape.

Chris




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