[gambit-list] Minor tweak to main wiki page

Mikael mikael.rcv at gmail.com
Tue Mar 12 14:30:45 EDT 2013


http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page minor tweak, hope
it cheered it up a bit - Gambit is really positive so the introduction
deserves to reflect that directly :-) brgds

Was:

Gambit-C is a version of the Gambit programming system in which the
compiler generates portable C code. The main features of Gambit-C are:

   - *Conformance.* The Gambit-C system conforms to the R4RS, R5RS and IEEE
   Scheme standards and implements all optional features. Tail calls and first
   class continuations conform to the Scheme semantics. The full numeric tower
   is implemented, including: arbitrary precision integers (bignums),
   rationals, inexact reals (floating point numbers), and complex numbers.
   Several extensions to Scheme are provided, including: lightweight threads,
   a foreign-function interface (FFI), and extended I/O capabilities (Unicode,
   networking, subprocesses, ...).
   - *Portability.* Because the system is mostly written in Scheme and the
   compiler generates portable C code, it is easy to port the system as well
   as programs compiled with it to any platform with a decent C or C++
   compiler. There is no reliance on a particular C compiler, although the
   system can take advantage of some *gcc*-specific constructs. The C code
   generated is oblivious to the endianness and word size of the target
   environment (32 and 64 bit architectures are currently supported).
   - *Performance.* The compiler includes several powerful program
   transformations such as user procedure inlining, partial-evaluation, and
   lambda-lifting. With appropriate declarations in the source code the
   executable programs generated by the compiler run roughly as fast as
   equivalent C programs. Programs containing no declarations are also
   optimized without compromising the Scheme semantics by speculatively
   inlining predefined procedures (see the
benchmarks<http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Benchmarks>
page
   for a comparison with other Scheme implementations and other languages).
   Thanks to an efficient implementation of continuations, the thread system
   is very efficient and can support millions of concurrent threads. The
   bignum library uses sophisticated algorithms that are in some cases
   asymptotically faster than those of GMP (GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic
   Library). [Note: With the release of GMP 4.3.0 in April 2009, this claim is
   no longer true; see the
benchmarks<http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Benchmarks>
page
   for some crude comparisons on large integers.] ( <- removed )
   - *Reliability.* Stable releases typically have very few bugs. Bug
   tracking is done with bugzilla <http://www.bugzilla.org/>. Gambit-C has
   been used to develop large-scale real-world software and
services<http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Real-world_software_and_services>
in
   academic and commercial settings.


=>

Now:

Gambit-C is a version of the Gambit programming system in which the
compiler generates portable C code. The main features of Gambit-C are:

   - *Conformance.* The Gambit-C system conforms to the R4RS, R5RS and IEEE
   Scheme standards and implements all optional features. Tail calls and first
   class continuations conform to the Scheme semantics. The full numeric tower
   is implemented, including: arbitrary precision integers (bignums),
   rationals, inexact reals (floating point numbers), and complex numbers.
   Several extensions to Scheme are provided, including: lightweight threads,
   a foreign-function interface (FFI), and extended I/O capabilities (Unicode,
   networking, subprocesses, ...).
   - *Portability.* Because the system is mostly written in Scheme and the
   compiler generates portable C code, it is easy to port the system as well
   as programs compiled with it to any platform with a decent C or C++
   compiler. There is no reliance on a particular C compiler, although the
   system can take advantage of some *gcc*-specific constructs. The C code
   generated is oblivious to the endianness and word size of the target
   environment (32 and 64 bit architectures are currently supported). There
   are no external library dependencies, and OS API dependencies can be
   removed so as to run directly on the bare metal. The system includes
   high-performance bignum support utilizing sophisticated algorithms,
   implemented in Scheme. ( <- added )
   - *Performance.* The compiler includes several powerful program
   transformations such as user procedure inlining, partial-evaluation, and
   lambda-lifting. With appropriate declarations in the source code the
   executable programs generated by the compiler run roughly as fast as
   equivalent C programs. Programs containing no declarations are also
   optimized without compromising the Scheme semantics by speculatively
   inlining predefined procedures (see the
benchmarks<http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Benchmarks>
page
   for a comparison with other Scheme implementations and other languages).
   Thanks to an efficient implementation of continuations, the thread system
   is very efficient and can support millions of concurrent threads.
   - *Reliability.* Stable releases typically have very few bugs. Bug
   tracking is done with bugzilla <http://www.bugzilla.org/>. Gambit-C has
   been used to develop large-scale real-world software and
services<http://dynamo.iro.umontreal.ca/wiki/index.php/Real-world_software_and_services>
in
   academic and commercial settings.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.iro.umontreal.ca/pipermail/gambit-list/attachments/20130312/7a5c45b5/attachment.htm>


More information about the Gambit-list mailing list