Re: Pre-announcement of partial Scheme port of client libraries

[Schanzenbach, Martin]

Hi Maxime,

> On 15. Sep 2021, at 12:57, Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I've been porting parts of the client libraries of GNUnet to Guile (*) and
> changing a few things.  It now has sufficient functionality for a v0.1
> POC release (**), but I have a few questions to ask before I announce it.
> 
> (*) See ‘4. Relation to gnunet-guile’ for differences with
> <https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet-guile2.git/> and
> <https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/gnunet.git/>;.
> (**) It can talk with the NSE service.
> 
> 1. Name
> 
>   I've been calling the port ‘Scheme-GNUnet’.  Would this be acceptable,
>   or do I have to remove GNUnet from the name?
> 

You can call it however you want, most other libraries/bindings start with 
"gnunet-".
Personally, I would prefer to have it follow this scheme, but I do not really 
mind.

> 2. Infrastructure
> 
>   As it is library for interacting with GNUnet services, I thought
>   the pre-existing gnunet-developers@gnu.org, help-gnunet@gnu.org and
>   info-gnunet@gnu.org mailing lists might be appropriate.  Can I direct
>   people help-gnunet@ for help about Scheme-GNUnet and gnunet-developers@
>   for sending patches for Scheme-GNUnet?  And can I send release announcements
>   at info-gnunet@?

You may use our infrastructure (esp, git.gnunet.org) under the terms of the 
project and especially under the terms of the copyright assignment.
I would assume that given the limited traffic your mailing lists have at this 
time, using them is not a problem.
Should the situation change, we can figure something out then.

> 
> 3. Copyright assignment
> 
>   I noticed most source code of GNUnet, with some exceptions, only lists
>   ‘GNUnet e.V.’ under the copyright notices.  Would it be possible for
>   contributors to Scheme-GNUnet to (if they want to) assign the copyright
>   to GNUnet e.V.?  And would this be desirable?
> 

If you use git.gnunet.org, the CA covers this piece of "software" as well.
Please refer to the CA for details.
Note that the CA automatically applies to all the software under git.gnunet.org 
and the copyright must be assigned in order to get commit rights.
I would assume that for all gnunet software (especially bindings) yes, this 
would be desirable.

> 4. Relation to gnunet-guile (not a question).
> 
> Some may be wondering why I didn't use the
> <https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/gnunet.git/> or
> <https://git.gnunet.org/gnunet-guile2.git> Guile bindings instead of writing
> my own <https://notabug.org/maximed/scheme-gnunet>;.  The answer is that:
> 
>   (1) I didn't write Guile->C bindings, I ported parts of GNUnet from C to
>       Guile
>   (2) A few parts of the Guile bindings are reused in the Guile port
>   (3) there were some crashes with the Guile bindings (things like
>       NULL-pointer exceptions)
>   (4) I couldn't figure out the issue
>   (5) I would like to use GNUnet from within guile-fibers, but didn't succeed
>       in letting the C event loop cooperate with guile-fibers' scheduling
>   (6) I find Scheme easier to hack on than C.

In general this is a valid (but also potentially tedious) approach.
bfix is doing the same in Go: https://github.com/bfix/gnunet-go

We should think about how to handle the confusion with the other repos.
I am not familiar with gnunet-guile(2), but from what you are writing it 
appears as if we may want to consider deprecating and archiving those repos.
Maybe it makes sense to rename gnunet-guile2 to gnunet-bindings-guile and 
calling yours gnunet-guile or something like that.

@grothoff wdyt?

BR
Martin

> 
> For the interested, I have included a copy of the manual.
> 
> Greetings,
> Maxime.
> <fdl.tm><scheme-gnunet.html><scheme-gnunet.pdf><scheme-gnunet.tm>

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