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And there are related efforts to upgrade the lisp used in emacs to a more modern and standardized version. I think it is GuileEmacs I am remembering. I hope t

by wscott 8y ago

And there are related efforts to upgrade the lisp used in emacs to a more modern and standardized version. I think it is GuileEmacs I am remembering. I hope to two efforts are compatible.

nerdponx 8y ago
My thinking as well. This is a golden opportunity to replace Elisp. Edit: Guile won't be used, because of the burden of contributing. https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs/issues/66#issuecomment-273333925 https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs/issues/66#issuecomment-273...
- rekado 8y ago
  This is very unfortunate. Emacs itself also requires copyright assignment, though, so if Remacs doesn't then it's virtually impossible for GNU to switch code bases (not that it would have been likely anyway).
simias 8y ago
That's the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this project but I think it might be a mistake. Convincing people (and contributors) to ditch C-emacs for "remacs" will be hard, convincing people to ditch elisp-emacs for guilemacs will be hard but doing both at the same time might be just too much. If remacs manages to reach the point where you can use it to replace emacs in-place without any breakage while bringing better performance and more stability it will be a tremendous success IMO.
rauhl 8y ago
Although Scheme has a standard, I wouldn’t really call Guile ‘more modern and standardised’: Guile has no standard (it extends the Scheme standard in incompatible ways), and ‘modern’ is hard to define. Emacs Lisp added lexical scope in the past couple of years, probably more recently than Guile added a new language (as opposed to library) feature — is that modern enough? I wouldn’t imagine that the two efforts are compatible, because they are both efforts to rewrite the Emacs Lisp engine in another language, one in Rust & one in Guile Scheme. It’s possible that one might be able to call over to the other, through its CFFI. I’d like to see Emacs rewritten in Common Lisp, and so I’d prefer a Rust engine to a Guile engine: Rust is a static language, and a Rust engine is unlikely to lead to Rust-extensible Emacs code, while a Guile engine is likelier to lead to Guile-extensible Emacs code, which is completely the wrong direction IMHO.
- dkarl 8y ago
  it extends the Scheme standard in incompatible ways What does "incompatible" mean here? Incompatible with the Scheme language reports, or incompatible with other Schemes' extensions?
  - qbrass 8y ago
    Guile includes a bunch of functions that aren't part of the standard, and have been around before Scheme's standard thought to implement libraries.
justinhj 8y ago
It’s a mistake to replace emacs lisp. For a start everyone’s custom code and configurations would have to be modified or scrapped. Package libraries would have to be ported. Much better to just improve it in a backwards compatible way or with libraries. Both of which are happening.
- rekado 8y ago
  The goal of Guile Emacs is not to replace Elisp; it is to replace the implementation with Guile.

by wscott 8y ago

And there are related efforts to upgrade the lisp used in emacs to a more modern and standardized version. I think it is GuileEmacs I am remembering. I hope to two efforts are compatible.

nerdponx 8y ago

My thinking as well. This is a golden opportunity to replace Elisp. Edit: Guile won't be used, because of the burden of contributing. https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs/issues/66#issuecomment-273333925 https://github.com/Wilfred/remacs/issues/66#issuecomment-273...

rekado 8y ago
This is very unfortunate. Emacs itself also requires copyright assignment, though, so if Remacs doesn't then it's virtually impossible for GNU to switch code bases (not that it would have been likely anyway).

simias 8y ago

That's the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this project but I think it might be a mistake. Convincing people (and contributors) to ditch C-emacs for "remacs" will be hard, convincing people to ditch elisp-emacs for guilemacs will be hard but doing both at the same time might be just too much. If remacs manages to reach the point where you can use it to replace emacs in-place without any breakage while bringing better performance and more stability it will be a tremendous success IMO.

rauhl 8y ago

Although Scheme has a standard, I wouldn’t really call Guile ‘more modern and standardised’: Guile has no standard (it extends the Scheme standard in incompatible ways), and ‘modern’ is hard to define. Emacs Lisp added lexical scope in the past couple of years, probably more recently than Guile added a new language (as opposed to library) feature — is that modern enough? I wouldn’t imagine that the two efforts are compatible, because they are both efforts to rewrite the Emacs Lisp engine in another language, one in Rust & one in Guile Scheme. It’s possible that one might be able to call over to the other, through its CFFI. I’d like to see Emacs rewritten in Common Lisp, and so I’d prefer a Rust engine to a Guile engine: Rust is a static language, and a Rust engine is unlikely to lead to Rust-extensible Emacs code, while a Guile engine is likelier to lead to Guile-extensible Emacs code, which is completely the wrong direction IMHO.

dkarl 8y ago
it extends the Scheme standard in incompatible ways What does "incompatible" mean here? Incompatible with the Scheme language reports, or incompatible with other Schemes' extensions?
- qbrass 8y ago
  Guile includes a bunch of functions that aren't part of the standard, and have been around before Scheme's standard thought to implement libraries.

justinhj 8y ago

It’s a mistake to replace emacs lisp. For a start everyone’s custom code and configurations would have to be modified or scrapped. Package libraries would have to be ported. Much better to just improve it in a backwards compatible way or with libraries. Both of which are happening.

rekado 8y ago
The goal of Guile Emacs is not to replace Elisp; it is to replace the implementation with Guile.