Re: Guile/Scheme

[Nicola Pero]

> > There is a lot of effort invested in the existing testcases.  So I'm  
> > reluctant to change unless to something as simple and flexible, but  
> > with an easier language.  In practice, if we have an ObjC interpreter 
> > I  could get enthusiastic enough to work on rewriting existing tests, 
> > but  I'm dubious about going to a compiled system or another language, 
> > but  short of that I just feel laziness setting in and I'm sure I 
> > have  better things to do ... 
> 
> Agreed,:-) if I get "that feeling" again, I'll have a look at StepTalk 
> to see if I can create an ObjC interpreter from it. :-)

StepTalk looks pretty nice.  There is also a 'guile' module for StepTalk
(which actually uses gnustep-guile).  It shouldn't be terribly difficult
to add an interpreter for an ObjC-like language for StepTalk.

I was wondering if ... given that StepTalk supports many scripting
languages, I was wondering if by writing some sort of regression framework
using StepTalk (instead of gnustep-guile directly), could we have this
regression framework run tests both in guile (using StepTalk's guile
support), in SmallTalk (using StepTalk's smalltalk support), and maybe in
the future in an ObjC-like interpreted language (and possibly any other
scripting language people might want to use) ?

Then we could keep the tests we already have in guile, and add new tests
in the ObjC-like interpreted language, when we have the interpreter
(writing such an interpreter looks like a very exciting task, if only I
had the time to work on every exciting task ...).

I actually think the actual reality of the things is much more complex
than this, but I was just throwing in a suggestion - some sort of switch
to StepTalk without moving away from guile, and then later (if ever) we
can replace guile with something different (or simply write new tests in
something different, keeping the old ones in guile).

Not sure though, just brainstorming, really.

(I think Richard is temporarily without internet access, so you might need
to wait a little [possibly one or two days] before expecting any sort of
reply from him).