Re: OK, what about some resolution (Re: GUILE's GC - why we struggling to solve already solved problems?)

[bernard URBAN <Bernard dot Urban at meteo dot fr>]

>>>>> "Han-Wen" == Han-Wen Nienhuys <hanwen@cs.uu.nl> writes:

    [...]

    >> side.  However, a real problem are pointers on systems, where
    >> UNICOS is defined, as the following excerpt from gc.h shows:

    >> #ifdef _UNICOS # define SCM2PTR(x) ((SCM_CELLPTR) (SCM_UNPACK
    >> (x) >> 3)) # define PTR2SCM(x) (SCM_PACK (((scm_bits_t) (x)) <<
    >> 3)) #else # define SCM2PTR(x) ((SCM_CELLPTR) (SCM_UNPACK (x)))
    >> # define PTR2SCM(x) (SCM_PACK ((scm_bits_t) (x))) #endif /* def
    >> _UNICOS */

    Han-Wen> I have the strong suspicion (given the amount tweaking
    Han-Wen> needed to get typedef void * SCM into Scheme, and the
    Han-Wen> various hacks I encounter) that there is lots of code
    Han-Wen> that does not follow this convention.  When was the
    Han-Wen> UNICOS port last seen alive?

I was a UNICOS user 3 years ago. The fact that guile at that time run
on UNICOS was one of the reason I invested in it. As time passes, it
may eventually that guile will only run on machines where GCC has been
ported. The problems I had with installing guile-1.4 on HP-PA
(with HP cc) illustrate this trend: I can no longer dynlink on HP-PA
by upgrading from 1.3.4 to 1.4.

And now coming back to the present thread: this 3 year old guile 
(version 1.0b3 !) for Cray had no significant functionality missing
from the current one: at this time I had as today modules, gh
interface, graphical output with Tk, hobbit compiler.

Sorry to be a bit provocative, but a lot of discussion on this list
appears hair-splitting: why change a GC which works fine ?

The beginning of the discussion arose from guile taking over main().
I have never found this to be a problem, and I have successfully 
embedded/extended guile in/by very curious software: Prolog interpreter, 
J (an APL dialect) and lastly CLISP (so 2 different GC are running !).

Yes, guile works great since YEARS, only some self-bashing oriented
guile users appear to ignore it.

Regards.

-- 

B. Urban