Hi everyone, So I found myself with a little bit of spare time this week and so I dusted off a Guile-based project I've been working on and was dismayed to be reminded that the current version of guile-lib (0.1.6) includes a distribution of SSAX that flat-out doesn't work. I've posted about this on the guile-lib mailing list and filed a bug on gna.org, but that was a year ago and since neither of those locations is controlled by active guile-lib contributors [1], I don't expect to see much movement on this in the immediate future.
But it does raise the question of what the proper role for guile-lib is, given that no one seems to have touched it in more than a year. Its stated purpose is to serve as a "a down-scaled, limited-scope CPAN for Guile," and several of the included modules (e.g., the texinfo code) are appropriate to that description, but there are other modules in there that seem like they belong somewhere else -- not necessarily in Guile core, but in a comprehensive, maybe-obligatory library of code whose companion relationship to the Guile core distribution emphasizes the fact that its contents are things users are going to expect to have as part of a modern language platform, a la the Java "classpath libraries" or CPAN. Some examples of this type of module are: SSAX, statprof, the unit testing code, and the logging stuff (although I've actually never used those last two). So maybe the entity I'm describing above is what guile-lib is supposed to be, but it's not what it is right now. In addition to what I've already mentioned, there are package that aren't currently in guile-lib -- like Evan Prodromou's (net http) -- that would optimally be part of a more complete system. Another possibility is that the Snow project could meet this need, but there are some Guile-side technical hurdles to be jumped before it'd be viable -- and it's not like they don't have their own problems with bit-rot. It seems like other parts of Guile are being re-organized a bit right now -- any chance we could take a look at this as well? Regards, Julian [1] - http://www.wingolog.org/archives/2008/08/02/on-the-many-roads-to-perdition
