Re: guilev1/2 musing

[Valentin Villenave]

On 1/24/19, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
> Development happens on Guile2, none on Guile1.

That’s what I’m worried about: if we *were* to include guile1 as a git
submodule (effectively forking it, although I don’t imagine many Lily
devs are gonna be fiddling with its codebase), what are the
sustainability prospects in the long run? (e.g. when new major GCC /
glibc / whatever versions come around, breaking compatibility at some
point)

*Or* can we safely regard Guile v1 as "stable" and reliable on a
long-term perspective (much like you no longer need to worry about new
version of TeX coming out, or a very narrow number of other programs
deemed "frozen in perfection")? If so, sticking with v1 would mean
better performance, greater stability *and* acceptable sustainability
(and besides as you noted, even Guile v2 depends on very few devs,
thus keeping the getting-hit-by-a-bus factor fairly high anyway). And
including Guile v1 as a submodule could make life easier for users
whose distros no longer offer a guile1(-devel) package, couldn’t it?

On an unrelated subject, am I the only one puzzled by the fact that,
although the global situation with Guile 2.0 was a mess, still they
went ahead and released new major versions, a.k.a. 2.2 and 2.4? Or is
it a year-based release cycle where the numbers don’t mean anything?
Very unusual within GNU programs.

Cheers,
V.