Fwd: Installing SLIB 3b1 with Guile 1.8.6 (to work with Gnucash 2.8.8) [SOLVED]

[Tom Browder]

I recently had a struggle getting slib to work with the latest guile
release (1.8.6).  I believe para. 6.1.1 of the guile reference manual
needs to be rewritten since the procedures don't seem to work as
advertised.  Following is the wording I suggest based on my experience
with guile 1.8.6 and the latest slib release (3b1):

[Note that the link to the SLIB installation is broken.]

==========

6.1.1 SLIB installation

The following procedure works, e.g., with SLIB version 3b1 (see SLIB
installation):

  1. Unpack SLIB and install it using make install from its directory. By
     default, this will install SLIB in /usr/local/lib/slib/. Running make
     installinfo installs its documentation, by default under
     /usr/local/info/.

  2. Create a symlink in the Guile directory to SLIB, e.g.:

               mkdir -p /usr/local/share/guile/site
               ln -s /usr/local/lib/slib /usr/local/share/guile/site/slib

  3. Use Guile to create the catalog file, e.g.,:

               # guile
               guile> (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
               guile> (require 'new-catalog)
               guile> (quit)

     The catalog data should now be in /usr/local/share/guile/site/slibcat.

     If instead you get an error such as:

         Unbound variable: scheme-implementation-type

     then a solution is to get a newer version of Guile, or to modify
ice-9/slib.scm to use define-public for the offending variables.

  4. Test the installation by executing the following at the command line:

               guile -c "(use-modules (ice-9 slib)) (require 'printf)"

==========

Notice that the instructions for setting environment variables, for
some reason, did not work for me.  I have seen several other threads
from other folks who have had the same experience, i.e., environment
variables not working.

Notice also that the directory /usr/local/share/guile/site was not
produced during the guile installation, and putting the slib directory
under /usr/local/share/guile/1.8 didn't work either.

I'll be happy to present this as a patch.

Regards,

-Tom

Tom Browder
Niceville, Florida
USA