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Given that Guile was basically launched by an RMS FUD attack on Tcl more than 20 years ago, 6 years seems like a rounding error. http://vanderburg.org/old_page

Given that Guile was basically launched by an RMS FUD attack on Tcl more than 20 years ago, 6 years seems like a rounding error. http://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/ http://vanderburg.org/old_pages/Tcl/war/

davexunit 10y ago
It's been 6 years since Guile 2.0, when Guile went from being an interpreter only to having a VM and AOT compiler.
- amirouche 10y ago
  You mean a jit compiler. There is still not AOT compiler for GNU Guile AFAIK. Except janneke work.
  - clacke2 10y ago
    There is an AOT compiler from source to bytecode, and then there is a bytecode interpreter. Wingo is considering the possibility of having a bytecode-to-native JIT or a source-to-native compiler.
  - davexunit 10y ago
    Guile uses an ahead of time (AOT) compiler. Someone wrote an experimental tracing JIT recently [0] but that's not part of Guile itself. [0] https://github.com/8c6794b6/guile-tjit https://github.com/8c6794b6/guile-tjit
    - bandrami 10y ago
      I believe in theory it also uses Lightning[1], but I can no longer get Lightning to build since GCC 6 or so, so I can't verify that. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/ https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/
belorn 10y ago
Tcl was accused of being a scripting language that is more suitable for simple scripts, so I went and took a look at the Wikipedia article to see if it too presented a similar view. To quote: "It is commonly used embedded into C applications,[9] for rapid prototyping, scripted applications, GUIs, and testing.[10]" Is wikipedia also doing a fud attack on Tcl (as it naturally could be the case), or is RMS post simply a less diplomatic and less friendly way to say that Tcl don't have the same purpose and use case as languages like c and c++? Any turning complete language can of course be used for anything, but looking at how something is used often give a good hint on where its strengths are.
- microtherion 10y ago
  At the time, Tcl was being used for fairly large apps (and it still is, e.g. in WaveSurfer). As for large scale suitability, I would guess that both Tcl and guile nowadays are eclipsed by Lua for embedded scripting, which to me would suggest that "simple" won out over "powerful". What is not mentioned in that thread (at least not in RMS' original message) is that what triggered his edict was that somebody extended gdb with Tcl as the extension language. This was an absolutely reasonable use case for Tcl - the lightweight syntax makes it perfect as an interactive, embedded scripting language. This discussion led to the creation of Guile, the withering of Tcl support in gdb, and eventually the introduction of a gdb that used Guile as its extension language — in 2014, 20 years after RMS decided that the Tcl extension (which I believe pretty much worked already) was unacceptable. Of course, as astute readers will already have guessed, Tcl was BSD licensed...
  - the_why_of_y 10y ago
    Your narrative omits that gdb added Python scripting support in 2009. Of course, as astute readers will already have guessed, Python is permissively licensed.
    - microtherion 10y ago
      Both true, but I did not want to further digress. I would argue that the fact that it took 15 years for scripting support to show up again is evidence that the original policy was counter-productive.
vithlani 10y ago
:) :) .... I cannot stop laughing, the way this rolls of the tongue...
appleflaxen 10y ago
that's fantastic context; thanks for pointing this out.

davexunit 10y ago

It's been 6 years since Guile 2.0, when Guile went from being an interpreter only to having a VM and AOT compiler.

amirouche 10y ago
You mean a jit compiler. There is still not AOT compiler for GNU Guile AFAIK. Except janneke work.
- clacke2 10y ago
  There is an AOT compiler from source to bytecode, and then there is a bytecode interpreter. Wingo is considering the possibility of having a bytecode-to-native JIT or a source-to-native compiler.
- davexunit 10y ago
  Guile uses an ahead of time (AOT) compiler. Someone wrote an experimental tracing JIT recently [0] but that's not part of Guile itself. [0] https://github.com/8c6794b6/guile-tjit https://github.com/8c6794b6/guile-tjit
  - bandrami 10y ago
    I believe in theory it also uses Lightning[1], but I can no longer get Lightning to build since GCC 6 or so, so I can't verify that. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/ https://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/

belorn 10y ago

Tcl was accused of being a scripting language that is more suitable for simple scripts, so I went and took a look at the Wikipedia article to see if it too presented a similar view. To quote: "It is commonly used embedded into C applications,[9] for rapid prototyping, scripted applications, GUIs, and testing.[10]" Is wikipedia also doing a fud attack on Tcl (as it naturally could be the case), or is RMS post simply a less diplomatic and less friendly way to say that Tcl don't have the same purpose and use case as languages like c and c++? Any turning complete language can of course be used for anything, but looking at how something is used often give a good hint on where its strengths are.

microtherion 10y ago
At the time, Tcl was being used for fairly large apps (and it still is, e.g. in WaveSurfer). As for large scale suitability, I would guess that both Tcl and guile nowadays are eclipsed by Lua for embedded scripting, which to me would suggest that "simple" won out over "powerful". What is not mentioned in that thread (at least not in RMS' original message) is that what triggered his edict was that somebody extended gdb with Tcl as the extension language. This was an absolutely reasonable use case for Tcl - the lightweight syntax makes it perfect as an interactive, embedded scripting language. This discussion led to the creation of Guile, the withering of Tcl support in gdb, and eventually the introduction of a gdb that used Guile as its extension language — in 2014, 20 years after RMS decided that the Tcl extension (which I believe pretty much worked already) was unacceptable. Of course, as astute readers will already have guessed, Tcl was BSD licensed...
- the_why_of_y 10y ago
  Your narrative omits that gdb added Python scripting support in 2009. Of course, as astute readers will already have guessed, Python is permissively licensed.
  - microtherion 10y ago
    Both true, but I did not want to further digress. I would argue that the fact that it took 15 years for scripting support to show up again is evidence that the original policy was counter-productive.

vithlani 10y ago

:) :) .... I cannot stop laughing, the way this rolls of the tongue...

appleflaxen 10y ago

that's fantastic context; thanks for pointing this out.