Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_...@web.de> writes: > David Kastrup writes: > >> To a certain degree one can chalk this off as "growing pains" that >> long-standing users have to shoulder, at least when working with >> development rather than stable versions. > > I’d like to chime in here. When looking at the prospects of larger Guile > adoption, I think that Lilypond is a critical component: It is an early > adopter and the absolute top tool in the niche it took. > > People thinking about adopting Guile will ask themselves "is this a > viable longterm option?". They will then look at Lilypond, the prime > example of a highly successful Guile-using tool. > > So this is not just a growing pain for Lilypond. It is a critical issue > for Guile. > > Both communities, Lilypond and Guile, need Lilypond-Guile2 to work well. > > And given the speed I see from Guile 2.1.7 at other tasks, there should > be ways to make Lilypond-Guile2.2 outperform Lilypond-Guile1.8 > significantly. > > Best wishes, > Arne > > PS: Just saying "it’s a scripting language now" will not cut it.
With an implied "rather than an extension language": that _would_ cut it. It would imply LilyPond having to work with a fork of Guile-1.8, and possibly encourage active maintenance of such a fork independently of LilyPond. It would also put a clear perspective on Emacs-Guile's future, namely none. It would be a valid and clear option to pursue. In some respects, that is where I see Guile drifting, but it appears to me as something happening more by accident than design and it is not apparently what its developers actively _chose_ for Guile's future. > People who adopt Guile now will have to ask whether it will stay a > viable option as scripting language, and they will again look at > Lilypond to see whether Guile-as-an-option kept its promises. Well, Guile is not an "option" in LilyPond, and it is clearly more than just an extension language (as I believe it is designed to be in GnuCash). It's more like its programming paradigm. The C++ part is structured to fit in with Guile. But this sort of 1:1 relation is much more tenuous with Guile-2 since the interaction costs have become quite larger. So it works better for either applications that have just a little Guile, or for applications that have little else. -- David Kastrup
