[Chicken-users] chicken and threads (can they be disabled)

[Dru Nelson]

hi,

I am considering using chicken for a Unix app. The app is currently in Ruby. Ruby was a good start,

but some of the issues I outline below exist in that implementation.

I evaluated most Scheme implementations from a research point of view and it looks

like chicken fits my needs the best. It compiles to C, is portable, has a good community,

a novel GC, excellent FFI, and a system for libraries (eggs). I want to avoid C, but get 

decent performance. Overall, chicken looks like a very pragmatic system that might solve this.

For this particular application, it is really important that I can get access to the raw Unix/Posix API for I/O handling.

This is the problem I've run into with many languages over the years. They attempt to provide support for thread systems which invariably taints how IO is handled. I just need to be able to cleanly perform IO, fork, select etc. without concern that the system call is being abstracted or wrapped with additional logic.

Some languages have support for this via a compilation step (--no-threads). Does Chicken have this capability?

Should I use the existing eggs/units for Posix and Socket IO or use the ffi?

cheers,

dru

dru nelson
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