[Chicken-users] scheme, builds, and virtual appliances

[bryan rasmussen]

hi,

I was reading the complaints of various luminaries over in the scheme
hackers list as to why would one want to choose Chicken? I guess I
would want to choose Chicken because I don't want to get dirty with C,
but I want the portability of C.

C is portably not just across platforms it is portable across
languages and applications as platforms. Many languages allow
interaction with C in some way, probably because the languages need to
drop down to the C level to do some things.

if you want to write a driver or extension module for python you may
have to use Swig or distutils to get it to work with Python, that is
to say there are a number of specialized applications you need to have
working together.

The same thing if you were to bind erlang to C libraries
http://www.erlang-projects.org/Public/news/erlang_driver_toolki/view

Now a virtual appliance is a prepackaged virtual machine that has
everything setup that one needs to get started running a particular
suite of applications, tools on an OS or similar things:
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/

what about Virtual appliances that are setup up with not just Scheme,
Swig etc. but requisite tools and eggs to use Chicken for writing, say
as one example Erlang drivers? To do this for a good number of
scenarios, OS's etc. to demonstrate Chicken's portability as a tool
for writing C easily and efficiently?

This is probably silly of me to suggest but I find it interesting.

Cheers,

Bryan Rasmussen