[Chicken-janitors] #709: Development process problem: the self-dependency loop in the compiler is too tight

[Chicken Trac]

#709: Development process problem: the self-dependency loop in the compiler is
too tight
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 Reporter:  johnwcowan  |       Owner:       
     Type:  defect      |      Status:  new  
 Priority:  major       |   Milestone:  4.8.0
Component:  compiler    |     Version:  4.7.x
 Keywords:              |  
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 Today I tried to recompile the current head after a `make confclean`, and
 found that my copy of `chicken` dating from 2011-09-21 (11 days old) was
 unable to compile it, because it did not understand the specialization
 type `input-port`.  It's reasonable to add a new specialization type.
 It's not reasonable to change the source to depend on it at the same time.
 Now I'm stuck: until there is a new release tarball from which I can get
 an up-to-date `chicken`, I can't rebuild my system.

 I see several possibilities here.

  1. Use a new branch for fast-changing but un-bypassable features like
 specialization.  I am basically in favor of doing all development on
 trunk, but because Chicken builds depend so delicately on Chicken builds,
 some concessions may have to be made.

  2. Have a switch to disable optimizations like this -- I tried setting
 `optimize-level` to 0 in `defaults.make`, but it didn't help.

  3. As a matter of social engineering, make sure to bump the minimal
 version number every time a backward incompatibility like this happens,
 and issue a release tarball.  At present the latest tarball is 4.7.2, so
 old as to be useless with trunk.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://bugs.call-cc.org/ticket/709>
Chicken Scheme <http://www.call-with-current-continuation.org/>
Chicken Scheme is a compiler for the Scheme programming language.