Re: the future of Guile

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

2007/12/4, Marco Maggi <address@hidden>:
> I think that  it is time for a chat on  the future of Guile.

Some pieces of input to the discussion:

* There is (or should be) a module called "workbook" in the
repository.  It contains policy documents setting out the direction
for Guile development.  It is important to be consistent regarding the
direction, over long time, otherwise Guile doesn't come very far.  The
Guile policy documents should be material for discussion if the future
of Guile is on the table.

* In my personal opinion, Guile needs a bytecode interpreter.  Keisuke
long ago wrote guile-vm which succeeded well concerning speed.  One
option is to dust it off and do the last part of development.

* Personal wish for Guile-2: Some primitive procedures, like display,
+ and equal? are, in principle, generics.  I think the evaluator
(eval.c), which currently is a frightening monster, could be both
cleaner and more efficient if all procedures were generic functions.
This could lead to the elimination of all special cases in eval.c and
elimination of argument checking in all primitives throughout the
Guile code base.

* It would be great if someone could complete the GOOPS meta object protocol.

* What about writing a python-module adapter so that Guile can
dynamically load python extension modules, using GOOPS for wrapping?
8-)