Re: Guile uses GNU MP

[Joerg Kreienbuehl]

Dale P. Smith writes:
 > I would think it should be a configure time option.  Use gmp if
 > installed, use scm bignums if not.  Or use a configure option to
 > select.  You might not even want bignum support.

Disabling bignum support means to convert a result to its inexact (double
float) representation when an overflow occurs.  That would probably be OK
for scripting, but it breaks programs that use bignums as large bit vectors
(as Goops probably does).

So probably we could check with the application developpers whether Guile
would still be usable for them with bignums disabled or what changes their
applications would need.

Joerg