Re: [PATCH] Add preliminary versions of the R7RS libraries along with documentation and tests

[Freja Nordsiek]

Copied over the docstrings that I had written over to the existing
R7RS modules in r7rs-wip. There are still procedures that need
docstrings, though.



Freja Nordsiek

On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 2:02 AM, Freja Nordsiek <address@hidden> wrote:
> I was able to add the unit tests I had written to the r7rs-wip branch
> and run them (patch is attached). The things that they tested mostly
> worked out of the box, which is a good sign. Had to fix a couple
> errors in some of the tests (checked the R7RS-small standard and my
> tests were indeed in error).
>
> Also, I found one error in the get-output-bytevector procedure in
> (scheme base), which was that the procedure discarded the bytes
> already written. get-output-bytevector is not supposed to be
> destructive to the bytes already written, but the R6RS output
> bytevector reading procedures are destructive. I made a patch with a
> very simple fix, which is to just write the bytes back. It has one
> major problem, though, and that is it is not threadsafe, so while it
> is an improvement, there is still some more work to do on it.
>
> Next thing I am going to do is copy over the docstrings I wrote for
> code going to the bitbucket (my versions of the r7rs modules) to the
> ones already in r7rs-wip since they are lacking docstrings.
>
>
> Freja Nordsiek
>
> On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 12:02 AM, Mark H Weaver <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi Freja,
>>
>> Freja Nordsiek <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> As far as splitting it into parts and discarding the scheme modules
>>> and keeping the documentation, that sounds like a good idea. I just
>>> did a quick perusal of the r7rs-wip branch and it does not seem to
>>> have any R7RS unit tests. Did I miss any? If not, the test code, as
>>> limited as it is, might also be useful.
>>
>> You didn't miss any.  I agree that we need a good R7RS test suite.  The
>> tests you wrote could be a useful starting point, but clearly more
>> coverage is needed.
>>
>> Some existing free R7RS Scheme implementations include test suites that
>> we might be able to incorporate.  Chibi Scheme includes one which I
>> found useful while developing 'r7rs-wip', and as I vaguely recall there
>> were at least two others.  Kawa might have one.
>>
>> I think we should aim to adapt and incorporate one or more existing R7RS
>> test suites from elsewhere, if the relevant licenses are favorable.
>>
>>> As for the question/puzzlement of why I wrote all of this, that is
>>> complicated, and kind of silly in retrospect. The r7rs-wip branch
>>> looked like it was most of the way to complete but was three years
>>> behind the master branch and thus seemed like it was possibly dead for
>>> unknown reasons [...]
>>
>>> Honestly, I should have just emailed the
>>> list and what not and asked about the status of the r7rs-wip branch
>>> and why it stalled, and then go from there (e.g. write the
>>> documentation and possibly tests). I ended up duplicating a lot of
>>> effort in a sloppy way.
>>
>> I can understand this.  Unnecessarily rewriting code seems to be a
>> common tendency in our community, and I confess that I've been known to
>> do it myself.  Hopefully the work had some educational value at least.
>>
>> I would guess that the overwhelming majority of the new Scheme code in
>> 'r7rs-wip' does not depend on the C changes.
>>
>> I stalled on the 'r7rs-wip' work for a few reasons.  For a couple of
>> years, I had doubts about whether the R7RS should be promoted at all,
>> given that it is gratuitously incompatible with the R6RS, which I
>> consider to be more competently designed even though I disagree with
>> some aspects of R6RS.
>>
>> Apart from that, I encountered difficulties implementing
>> cyclic-data-aware R7RS 'write' and 'write-shared' in a way that's
>> efficient, compatible with existing APIs (custom printers, print states,
>> etc), and not too gross.  I have an idea how to fix those issues, but
>> haven't gotten around to implementing it yet.
>>
>> There are some details that are not yet addressed, e.g. supporting
>> integers as components of module names, and deciding how to implement
>> (library <library-name>) clauses in 'cond-expand'.
>>
>> Finally, the lack of a comprehensive test suite made me concerned that
>> the code was not adequately tested.
>>
>>> I will split the documentation and possibly the tests out into their
>>> own patches and modify them to work with r7rs-wip branch instead of
>>> master branch.
>>
>> Thank you for your efforts!
>>
>>        Mark

0001-Added-docstrings-to-many-R7RS-small-procedures.patch
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