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<JohnCowan>Right. What it shows is how difficult writinh a necessary and sufficient spec actually is.

<ArneBab>just fixed a typo in https://codeberg.org/guile/guile/pulls/15 (found by pastor). Is this OK to merge?

<ArneBab>JohnCowan: are you already getting feedback on your nonchar spec from people here? I think rlb may have informed opinions.

<euouae>exciting to see more SRFIs merged

<euouae>why did you replicate the copyright otice?

<euouae>in srfi-modules.texi

<old>ArneBab: I can see to review that later today if I have time

<old>euouae: indeed I don't get why the license is in the doc

<old>ArneBab: I've made so requests for stylish change. I'll make a more in depth review later

<JohnCowan>The license in the doc is *for* the doc: not all SRFIs have code

<jan0t>the way intended to use guile is through guix?

<jan0t>what if I dont have guix and want to use it in my devuan

<rlb>"apt install guile-3.0" I suspect

<rlb>and guile-3.0-dev, perhaps, depending on what you want to do.

<euouae>jan0t: I use it on debian personally

<jan0t>and how do i install the libs to use it?

<jan0t>does it have a package manager to the libs?

<jan0t>euouae: then we will be the same, I am on devuan

<rlb>Ahh, right --- my impression is guix is common for that regardless. Though debian does I think have some deps.

<euouae>jan0t: you can use https://akkuscm.org if you are looking for a package manager *or* guix as a package manager

<jan0t>do you use akku?

<euouae>no I download the packages separately and install via ./configure && make

<rlb>(I'm still not very experienced with guix.)

<euouae>I think I even manage my own guile installation I don't bother with the guile-3.0 package

<jan0t>so you compile things up

<jan0t>but how do you keep track of the compilation artifacts?

<jan0t>to not let your system full of waste

<euouae>how do I update libs and such? or what do you mean?

<euouae>if I don't want to share the libs with other projects I put them under some prefix/ directory and then if I want to get rid of it I delete it; works a-la python virtual environments

<euouae>this is all not simple stuff. if you are not familiar with guile + how this stuff works, then just go with guix as a package manager, it's bullet-proof and guile's tailored to work with it

<euouae>guix can work side-to-side with devuan's apt, it won't interfere

<euouae>only downside is disk space

<euouae>also guile is not the language with projects with deep dependency trees. it's not as popular nor as thorough as other languages.

<euouae>(for application development.)

<euouae>what's your goal with guile?

<jan0t>I like lisp

<jan0t>I want to develop and contribute to projects that use it

<euouae>why not use racket-lang, for example?

<euouae>jan0t: guile is a bit more niche in my opinion. I've created these project skeletons: <https://codeberg.org/annoyingusername/guile-project-skeletons-autotools> if you want to see how to write an app or library using guile + autotools.

<jan0t>euouae racket is used in real life?

<jan0t>because guile is used in gnu for real life projects

<jan0t>like guix

<euouae>I use guile, I don't use racket, but racket is well-known to be nice for newcomers

<euouae>some things that are frustrating to newcomers are these: 1) setup build system 2) generate docs 3) run tests 4) use other dependencies 5) debugging

<euouae>(1), (2), (3) are solved by my link above but (2) not to everyone's satisfaction: it's not like e.g. python where you can write documentation in the docstring and it gets formatted. you can use documenta for it <https://guile-documenta.griz.in/> but I wasn't intrigued

<euouae>4) we already talked about and 5) is tricky, I have some notes in <https://createyourpersonalaccount.github.io/blog/computer-science/debugging-gnu-guile.html> but in general it's very tricky to debug guile

<euouae>my notes veer off to the VM stuff of guile as I was trying to learn it

<euouae>I believe racket is much better at debugging – look at DrRacket's docs on it. <https://docs.racket-lang.org/drracket/debugger.html>

<euouae>with guile you'll have to understand the macroexpander and the compilation tower to get basic debugging done. rough.

<euouae>in scheme *a lot* of the dependencies come in the form of SRFIs which are either bundled by Guile or you ship their source code (obtained from the official page srfi.schemers.org) together with your project

<euouae>that

<euouae>got to go talk toy ou another time

<rlb>I still do a good bit of debugging via "ponder, printf, ponder, ..." (or in guile's case, format).

<jan0t>format or display

<rlb>...or write, though there's also pk, which I hadn't noticed until recently.

<old>fortnunately the BLUE build sytem ought to solve 1, 2, 3, 4 pretty soon. without autotools

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2026-07-03.log