Re: Multiple version

[Tom Willemsen]

Hey Greg,

On Tue 03 Apr 2012 02:32:39 AM CEST, Greg Troxel wrote:

 >
 >   I was wondering if it's possible to have guile 1.8 and guile 2.0
 >   installed on the same system? I remember reading in the documentation
 >   that it is, but I haven't been able to pull it off yet, except by using
 >   different --prefix values for each.
 >
 > pkgsrc (a packaging system originally for NetBSD, but also supports
 > other BSDs, Linux, *Solaris, and others) doesn't have guile 2 yet (my
 > fault :-) but has 1.6 and 1.8.  1.8 is installed normally
 > (--prefix=/usr/pkg, named guile) and guile1.6 is installed
 > --prefix=/usr/pkg/guile/1.6.   So that's a data point about others'
 > approach to your problem.

Yeah I got this far with guile 2.0 as well.

 >   I don't know enough about the autotools to know what to do with
 >   guile.m4. Does automake/autoconf expect the file name to match
 >   something, or does it only look at the definitions inside, in which case
 >   it could simply be moved.
 >
 > You only need that to run autoconf on programs that depend on guile, and
 > either should be ok.  So you could patch it out of the 2.0 build.
 > But having a separate prefix seems easiest.

I understand, I know just enough about autoconf to know that }:)

But if I write something that depends on guile, would I have to change
anything in my scripts to use guile 2.0 if I've installed the file as,
for example, guile2.m4?

 > What's wrong (or actually problematic) about using /usr/guile2 as the
 > prefix for guile 2.0, and putting it in your path and/or passing that
 > for building other things?

There's nothing really wrong, I just think it's a little
unnecessary. Since guile seems to be able to live next to other versions
of itself for about 90%. All the library files and script files are
already in a special directory, only some of the other files
(info,m4,guile-tools) seem to conflict.

Anyway, it's not really a problem, it's pretty much just lazyness and
curiosity. I would like to use software for both versions with minimal
patching and I would like to be able to write software for guile 2
without using all kinds of configuration specific to my case.

I should probably just try it with a renamed guile.m4, I was actually
hoping for some recommendations or warnings or stories about how other
people handle it, I don't want to do something that goes completely
against all recommendations.

Thanks for your answer!

Cheers,
Tom