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Re: [Chicken-users] Questions on changing Chicken runtime and some other


From: felix winkelmann
Subject: Re: [Chicken-users] Questions on changing Chicken runtime and some other stuff
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 10:13:14 +0100

On 12/16/05, Sergey Khorev <address@hidden> wrote:

> 1. I see there is an item in the TASKS file named "an alternative frontend".
> Does this mean "compile programs from other languages to the C code which uses
> Chicken runtime"?

Yes, at various stages I thought about translating other languages into
low-level Scheme and compiling those. Scheme provides everyhing
that could be asked for, so nearly every language should be implementable
on top of it (not regarding any performance issues, though).
There are several hooks in the compiler (user-passes) and several
tools for writing parsers (silex, lalr, packrat) that would make this
quite easy...

>
> 2. I saw there were some issues on Win32, especially with MinGW. I wonder
> whether they have been resolved or not, so I can put my hands on them.

Yes, please. Brandon is currently wrestling with CMake, but perhaps
you can try the current snapshot yourself and report any build problems.
Some issues should be fixed by now, but I can't reproduce it since
I don't have a mingw system at hand.

>
> 3. Currently I'm thinking about another application of Chicken. I have a
> project in some language other than C (its name isn't a secret, just doesn't
> matter for now and I haven't even started implementing the project :)
> Definitely it will require a scripting language. I'd like to embed Chicken
> rather than to implement Yet Another Scheme in the host language, especially
> call/cc, hygienic macros and optional compilation of the Scheme code.
> The host language has FFI interface so embedding shouldn't be a problem,
> but I don't like an idea having two separate garbage collectors in one
> process. So I was wondering how difficult would be a task replacing Chicken
> runtime system? My idea is to keep current runtime interface but substitute
> the body with calls to the host language other than just C.
> Has anyone looked into this or even tried to implement?

Hm. So you mean putting the high-level stuff (essentially the Scheme part,
modulo any FFI C code) on top of a runtime-system like, say, OCaml?
Interesting problem... Definitely work intensive...


cheers,
felix




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