ftp.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/systems/acorn//Acorn.tar/Acorn/acornet/dev/scheme/gnu/scm4d3ar.spk/!RelNotes

Text File | 1994-01-24 | 4KB | 98 lines

Archimedes version of GNU Scheme 4d3
------------------------------------

This is a port of the Unix Scheme language interpreter written by Aubrey
Jaffer - for relevant documentation look in the !Scm.docs directory.
The scheme library is included - or at least those bits that make sense for
the archi.
Jacal is also available and works well - if you are using this you will
probably have to give it rather a lot of memory for it to work without
bombing out complaining about memory - if you only want to use the scheme
interpreter then you should have no problems...


Installing scheme
-----------------
Unpack the archive.
Make sure that the application has had its !Boot file run - it does this
automatically from running it from the desktop but if you try using it from
the command line without the relevant environmental variables set its
unlikely to behave itself...
After it has been seen by the filer you can either simply doubly click on it
to run or you can use
   scm
from the command line which will do the right things to kick it off.
Exiting is either control-d or (quit)


Loading scheme source :
if you keep your source in !Scm.scm then the following works :
   (load "<scm$dir>.foo")
to load foo from the above directory..


Note!
-----
You should not call (alarm-interrupt <n>) without having defined a handler
for the alarm interrupt - as default Ive added in one at the end of
!Scm.scm.Init - if you remove this and then ask for an alarm interrupt expect
a stack backtrace if you havent got a handler - ie it crashes :-)
Just about all the other unix features are compiled in ...other than pipes
because the support for them in unixlib is a bit wild - its along same lines
to the alarm interrupt problem - if you havent defined where pipefs is then
you get a mess - so no pipes for the moment...if anyone wants to have them
then ask me nicely to fling you a binary or download the next version of
Scm as it will have the patches for the archimedes with unixlib.


Bad news
--------
I did have (still do ) a version of this that was compiled using
the acorn libraries only and a few hacks from Paul Moore - this worked
fine for the test suite with a little bodging but unfortunately seems
to bomb out when running one of the rather more hairy test files in
Jacal (it passed the jacal vanilla test suite fine - it was the file
that demonstrated using it for tensors that killed it) - again if anyone
wants the version compiled with acorn libs and can live with this
shortcoming then email me...


Last little note
----------------
Unfortunately Ive had to mung around with the paths a bit to get it to
work - notably it seems that
(implementation-vicinity) and (program-vicinity) are a bit fractious - hence
if you find a file in the scheme library that doesnt work then look
to see if it redefines either of those two and look at the changes Ive made
to !Scm.slib.require and jacal.toploads in the way of where it looks for
files - should be obvious.

And thats it really...

pps - I have _no_ intention of making this run in a multitasking window
if you really want to I would advise that you download the standard ml
interpreter and whip out the frontend it uses written by robin watts -
this will work happily.
(Making it use the acorn libraries and not break any of the applications
like jacal is a bit doubtful..)

Share and enjoy,


al slater.
24-Jan-1994

email :
      [e-mail]      ;;; incoming and outgoing email
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snailmail should you need it or want to send me any interesting other
pd languages / interpreters / pd...
(If anyone has a copy of the ro2 prms they want rid of....)

kintail,
barclay park,
aboyne,
aberdeenshire.
ab34 5jf.