Re: Guile news for the GNU Status Report

[Neil Jerram]

address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Hello,

Hi Ludo,

> Karl Berry asked maintainers to submit a few paragraphs for the
> forthcoming GNU Status Report, a news bulletin to appear within the next
> couple of weeks with updates on what individual GNU packages are up to.
>
> Here’s a proposal.  The goal is to send a final version by Monday, 10th
> (sorry for not working on it earlier), and comments/amendments are
> welcome!  It's a bit long, but heck, there are so many things to say!

It looks good to me.  I had just one point of (minor) concern...

> Guile 2.0 is a breakthrough in Guile's history.  First and foremost, it
> is based on a compiler and a virtual machine.  The compiler compiles
> Scheme code to bytecode, applying well-known optimizations.  As a
> result, Scheme code runs noticeably faster with Guile 2.0.  Compilation
> can occur transparently: when the compiled form of a module is not found
> in cache, it is automatically compiled before being run.

People might assume that this means Guile is now less supporting of
interactive programming than in previous releases.  I think it would be
worth adding a sentence to clarify that this is not the case.  Perhaps
"Note that Guile still supports interactive programming, i.e. modifying
code in running programs, just as extensively as it has in previous
releases."
 
> 2011 promises to be another exciting year for Guile.  We believe Guile
> 2.0 is a great tool to push extensibility further and enhance software
> freedom!

Indeed!

     Neil