Re: Coexistence of different Guile versions

[Greg Troxel]

Tommi Höynälänmaa <address@hidden> writes:

> Guile (at least the Debian version) is designed so that different
> versions (e.g. 2.0 and 2.2) can coexist in the same system. However,
> this is not so for packages guile-xxx-dev. Consequently, many software
> libraries (such as guile-gnome-platform) have to be compiled for a
> single Guile version and they can't be used for several Guile versions
> in the same system.
>
> Could this be changed? For example, we could rename libguile.h to
> libguile-<version>.h and do the same for Guile libraries.

I see this as a packaging issue.

In pkgsrc, one can install multiple guile versions, each with headers
(pkgsrc does not have the notion of -dev for headers; packages just have
headers).  It does this by using prefixes.  For example guile 2.2 is
built using the prefix /usr/pkg/guile/2.2 instead of the usual /usr/pkg.

I think it's far easier to build different versions in different
prefixes, letting depending packages add in that prefix, than to try to
rename every file that's installed to have a version in it.


The real issue though is that guile seems to not have a stable enough
API that there are lots of things out there that have to use old
versions.  Fixing that would be best :-)  but I realize that everything
has a good reason and that's easier said than done.