[Gcl-devel] many topics

[root]

Bill,

re: cygwin

I'm trying to get access to a windows box so I can set up 
cygwin. Damn things are pretty scarce :-) The key problem
is setting up a "compile farm" of various pieces of equipment.
If I can break free about $1000 I can stack a bunch of used
equipment in my basement and set up a local farm. I'm 
deliberately maintaining 3 versions of linux (albeit all
redhat. gotta expand that too) so I can cross-build and find
bugs (like the Bool bug in GCL on RH7.3). I'll have to start
haunting Ebay to find used equipment. Christmas cometh. I'm
CERTAIN the girlfriend will appreciate her used Sun box :-)

re: Lisp

I downloaded CLISP last night and am downloading Corman now.  Lets see
if we can find a runnable Common Lisp you can use. GCL 2.4.x should
run there in some form but I don't know how it will interact with
mingw. I've been looking at the Codemist version and find I'm going to
have to bend a few things around in the Makefiles to make it work due
to the compile-file issue. I'll make it work but it is slow going.
For portability reasons Codemist is our best bet as it uses byte-codes.
I've also discovered (as you will shortly) that GCL 2.5 is ansi-95
compatible which means that the original source code needs
changes. For example, use-package used to create the package by
default. Now it appears that you need to call make-package first.
So to bring Axiom up to the present-day standards is going to take
me a bit more time.

re: TeXmacs

I know that a semi-native windows port has been high on Joris's list
for a long time so any progress there (possibly using mingw) would be
a heeuugge win. I've been too heads-down on the other issues to do
more than test it. We have to add the noweb.sty file to the list of
files that TeXmacs knows about.  I want to add a bunch of Latex macros
to noweb.sty (probably forking off an Axiom.sty file that is upward
compatible) but that's an enqueued task.

re: tenkan CVS

I've asked for all of the developers to have write access to the CVS so
we can try coordinating things thru there. Feel free to make your own
mis...ummm, changes there and I'll adapt. Please, please try to
document everything you do even if it is a one line fix.  At least
test it once and let me know if you can write to it.

Tim