[gambit-list] Cross-Scheme compatibility

John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
Sat Dec 21 12:00:25 EST 2019


On Sat, Dec 21, 2019 at 9:55 AM Lassi Kortela <lassi at lassi.io> wrote:


> Guile also very recently added a R7RS command line switch, so there is
> movement in the direction of greater standardization. The switch is in
> the master branch of Guile but AFAIK not yet in any published release.
>

Good to know.  I've updated Guile's status in the R7RS-small
implementations page from "partial" to "not yet released".


> The R7RS Large Edition standard is actively worked on, but I got the
> impression Racket is based on R6RS with plenty of custom extensions.
>

I think it would be historically more accurate to say that R6RS is based on
Racket and Chez (and to some extent Larceny) as they stood in 2007.  There
are basically four kinds of R6RS implementations on the list at <
http://www.r6rs.org/implementations.html>:

a)  Those whose implementations before R6RS contributed substantially to
the standard:  Racket, Chez, Larceny.   Authors of the first two have their
names on the standard, and Will Clinger's name was on all drafts except the
final version.

b) Those which retrofitted R6RS into an existing implementation but did not
contribute: Guile.

c) Those written after R6RS that (I think) were concerned to implement the
latest standard: Ikarus/Vicare, Iron, Loko, Mosh, Sagittarius, Ypsilon.  In
addition, Biwa implements only the base library and a handful of others.

>From which I think we may conclude that retrofitting R6RS is not a popular
thing to do.



John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Heckler: "Go on, Al, tell 'em all you know.  It won't take long."
Al Smith: "I'll tell 'em all we *both* know.  It won't take any longer."
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