[Chicken-users] cenv -- Chicken 5 virtual environments

[Jim Ursetto]

Hola, amigos. I’ve written a little script, cenv, which takes the pain out of using user repositories. It's called cenv because coops was taken. It’s modeled somewhat on Python virtualenv, though it’s more simplistic.

See https://github.com/ursetto/cenv, or simply curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ursetto/cenv/master/cenv.scm .

## Description

A single `csi` script, `cenv.scm`, which creates a self-contained Chicken 5 environment in a specified directory. It remembers which Chicken you used to create it, and it keeps its own repository of eggs, which extends that base Chicken.

When the environment is active, `csi` and `csc` and compiled programs use this repository, falling back to the base repository if an extension does not exist. `chicken-install` installs eggs into this new repository. `chicken-uninstall` is limited to the new repository, and `chicken-status` shows both. Generally, everything behaves as you expect.

`cenv` could be useful if:

- You are a regular user using the system Chicken and you have no permissions to, or don't want to, install eggs systemwide.

- You want to test or switch between different versions of eggs, without creating an entire Chicken installation to house them.