Re: [Chicken-users] Choosing chicken

[Brandon Van Every]

On 6/2/07, Shawn W. <address@hidden> wrote:

> What schemes do you use, for what? Why? Know of a nifty feature or
> approach a particular scheme takes that most others don't? What do
> you think a particular version (Including chicken, of course) is best
> suited for?

In summary:
- Windows support
- retargettability

I think Chicken has got its foot in the door for real Windows support,
because it has the CMake build system.  That said, Felix doesn't
actually develop for Windows, and there aren't many Windows
programmers in the Chicken community.  Visual Studio Express 2005
doesn't work, but that's most likely Microsoft's fault, for providing
a crippled free compiler.  All the other compilers work to my
knowledge.  I'm still trying to obtain Vista, to see if I can
duplicate some MinGW problems on it, possibly related to permissions.

Despite the problems, this is actually a lot farther along than a lot
of Scheme implementations.  They are all too frequently guilty of
Unix-centrism and building poorly on Windows.  In comparison, we're
building on Windows all the time, it stays working.  The advantage of
Chicken is its build is not a hodgepodge.  One build handles all
platforms, using a standard tool.  That should make it easy to
retarget Chicken at any platform where CMake is available, which is a
lot of platforms.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every