[Chicken-users] Chicken 2.6 available from MacPorts

[Arto Bendiken]

Mac users might be interested to know that Chicken has just been
updated [1] to the 2.6 release in the MacPorts [2] packaging system
(formerly known as DarwinPorts). Thus, provided you've setup [3]
MacPorts, installing Chicken 2.6 on Mac OS X is as simple as this:

 # sudo port install chicken

Or, if you're upgrading from a previous version installed via MacPorts:

 # sudo port upgrade chicken

These commands will fetch the 2.6 tarball from call/cc.org, validate
the checksum, perform a configure and build, and install Chicken into
the /opt/local hierarchy controlled by MacPorts.

As you can see in the Portfile [4], the default build is now
full-featured (as per MacPorts policies) and includes the options
--enable-gc-hooks --enable-apply-hook --enable-extra-symbol-slot
--enable-symbol-gc.

If you wish to build a less-featured version, you can make use of
variants; for example, to build Chicken without the extra symbol slot,
you can specify:

 # sudo port install chicken +no-symslot

Note also that MacPorts allows you to have multiple different versions
of Chicken installed, and you can activate/deactivate versions with
one or two simple commands.

I personally consider MacPorts the single best way of installing &
using Chicken and other Unix software on Mac OS X. In fact, I likely
would've gone back to using Linux as my desktop OS if the ports system
didn't exist.

As it is, most any useful Unix app can be found in the ports
repository (including the majority of the other popular Scheme
implementations), allowing a more-or-less standard GNU userland on OS
X (ports like 'coreutils' allow you to replace the BSD versions of
standard commands with their GNU equivalents).

So, if you're not yet using it, MacPorts is seriously good stuff and
well worth the brief learning curve - and *BSD or Gentoo users should
feel right at home to begin with.

(Felix: I've been given co-maintainership of the Chicken port in
MacPorts, so I will try and ensure that in the future, new versions
are available as soon as possible after they are released.)

[1] https://svn.macosforge.org/projects/macports/ticket/11657
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPorts
[3] http://www.macports.org/
[4] 
https://svn.macosforge.org/projects/macports/browser/trunk/dports/lang/chicken/Portfile

--
Arto Bendiken | http://bendiken.net/