Guile 1.3.4 released

[Jim Blandy <jimb at red-bean dot com>]

[The release isn't actually on ftp.gnu.org yet, but it will be soon.]

Release 1.3.4 of Guile is now available.

Guile is Project GNU's extension language library.  Guile is an
interpreter for Scheme, packaged as a library that you can link into
your applications to give them their own scripting language.  Guile
will eventually support other languages as well, giving users of
Guile-based applications a choice of languages.  Release 1.3.4 of
Guile is now available.

Major changes in this release:
- Guile acquired source-level debugger, written by Chris Hanson.
- Guile starts up faster when running scripts.
- Readline support has been improved.

See NEWS for a full list of user-visible changes.

Please send bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.

Obtaining Guile ======================================================

The latest official Guile release is available via anonymous FTP from
ftp.gnu.org, as /pub/gnu/guile/guile-1.3.4.tar.gz.

Via the web, that's:  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/guile/guile-1.3.4.tar.gz
For getit, that's:    ftp.gnu.org:/pub/gnu/guile/guile-1.3.4.tar.gz

There should also be a full list of mirror sites at the end of this
message.

The mailing list `guile@sourceware.cygnus.com' carries discussions,
questions, and often answers, about Guile.  To subscribe, send mail to
guile-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com.  Of course, please send bug
reports (and fixes!) to bug-guile@gnu.org.  Note that one address is
@sourceware.cygnus.com, and the other is at @gnu.org.

Thanks ===============================================================

The Guile maintainer is Jim ("Miserable old dodderer") Blandy.

Thanks to:
- Mikael ("Lazy dog") Djurfeldt, for his work on GOOPS, last-minute
  fixes to the 1.3.2 release, and just generally being really energetic
  and helpful.
- Chris Hanson, for writing the debugger
- Gary Houston, for continuing work on the I/O system.
- Tom Tromey, for Automake therapy (the code and its users alike).
- Greg Harvey, for work on the Guile web pages.
- Marius Vollmer, for extensive kibbitzing, and keeping Mikael company.

Bug reports and fixes from:

Greg Badros                     Keisuke Nishida
Robert Bihlmeyer                Ken Raeburn
Rodney Brown                    Julian Satchell
Ian Grant                       Jorgen Schaefer
Dirk Herrmann                   Bill Schottstaedt
Anders Holst                    Ceri Storey
Michael Livshin                 Suzuki Toshiya
Karoly Lorentey                 Tom Tromey
Han-Wen Nienhuys                Bernard Urban
Jan Nieuwenhuizen

Pre-release testing from:
Rodney Brown			Perry Metzger
Brad Knotwell			Tom Tromey
Thien-Thi Nguyen


About This Distribution ==============================================

Interesting files include:
- INSTALL, which contains instructions on building and installing Guile.
- NEWS, which describes user-visible changes since the last release of Guile.
- COPYING, which describes the terms under which you may redistribute
  Guile, and explains that there is no warranty.

Building and installing this distribution gives you:
guile --- a stand-alone interpreter for Guile, usually installed in
	/usr/local/bin.  With no arguments, this is a simple
	interactive Scheme interpreter.  It can also be used as an
	interpreter for script files; see the NEWS file for details.
guile-config --- a Guile script which provides the information necessary
	to link your programs against the Guile library.
guile-snarf --- a script to parse declarations in your C code for
	Scheme-visible C functions, Scheme objects to be used by C code, etc.
libguile.a --- an object library containing the Guile interpreter,
	usually installed in /usr/local/lib.  You can use Guile in
	your own programs by linking against this.
libqthreads.a --- an object library containing the QuickThreads
	primitives.  If you enabled thread support when you configured
	Guile, you will need to link your code against this too.
libguilereadline.a --- an object library containing glue code for the
        GNU readline library.  See NEWS for instructions on how to enable
	readline for your personal use.
<libguile.h>, <guile/gh.h>, <libguile/*.h> --- header files for
	libguile.a, usually installed in /usr/local/include.
ice-9, ice-9/*.scm --- run-time support for Guile: the module
	system, read-eval-print loop, some R4RS code and other
	infrastructure.  Usually installed in
	/usr/local/share/guile/<version>.
data-rep.info --- An essay on how to write C code that works with
	Guile Scheme values.

The Guile source tree is laid out as follows:

libguile:
	The Guile Scheme interpreter --- both the object library
	for you to link with your programs, and the executable you can run.
ice-9:  Guile's module system, initialization code, and other infrastructure.
guile-config:
	Source for the guile-config script.
qt: 	A cooperative threads package from the University of Washington,
	which Guile can use.  If you configure Guile with the
        --with-threads flag, you will need to link against the -lqt
        library, found in this directory.  Qt is under a separate
        copyright; see `qt/README' for more details.
guile-readline:
        The glue code for using GNU readline with Guile.  This
        will be build when configure can find a recent enough readline
        library on your system.
doc:	Some preliminary documentation for Guile.  The real Guile
	manual is incomplete, and is currently being revised.
	A development snapshot of the manual is available at
        ftp.red-bean.com as /pub/guile/snapshots/guile-doc-snap.tar.gz.
doc/example-smob: Sample code, discussed in the preliminary
	documentation above, for a program that extends Guile with a
	new data type, and functions that operate on it.


Guile Documentation ==================================================

There is some preliminary documentation for Guile under the directory
doc.  The real Guile manual is incomplete, and is currently being
revised.  A development snapshot of the manual is available at
ftp.red-bean.com as /pub/guile/snapshots/guile-doc-snap.tar.gz.


Anonymous CVS Access and FTP snapshots ===============================

We make the developers' working Guile sources available via anonymous
CVS, and by nightly snapshots, accessible via FTP.  See the files
`ANON-CVS' and `SNAPSHOTS' for details.

If you would like to receive mail when people commit changes to the
Guile CVS repository, you can subscribe to guile-cvs@sourceware.cygnus.com
by sending a message to guile-cvs-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com.  Even
better, you can get daily digests of these commit messages by sending
a message to guile-cvs-digest-subscribe@sourceware.cygnus.com.

If you want to subscribe an e-mail address other than the one that
appears in your From: header, say foo@bar.com, send a mail note to
guile-cvs-subscribe-foo=bar.com@sourceware.cygnus.com.


Hacking It Yourself ==================================================

As distributed, Guile needs only an ANSI C compiler and a Unix system
to compile.  However, Guile's makefiles, configuration scripts, and a
few other files are automatically generated, not written by hand.  If
you want to make changes to the system (which we encourage!) you will
find it helpful to have the tools we use to develop Guile.  They
are the following:

Autoconf 2.13 --- a system for automatically generating `configure'
	scripts from templates which list the non-portable features a
	program would like to use.  Available in
	"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/autoconf"

Automake 1.4 --- a system for automatically generating Makefiles that
	conform to the (rather Byzantine) GNU coding standards.  The
	nice thing is that it takes care of hairy targets like 'make
	dist' and 'make distclean', and automatically generates
	Makefile dependencies.  Automake is available in
	"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/automake"

	Before using automake, you may need to copy `threads.m4' and
	`guile.m4' from the top directory of the Guile core disty to
	`/usr/local/share/aclocal.

libtool 1.3.3 --- a system for managing the zillion hairy options needed
	on various systems to produce shared libraries.  Available in
	"ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libtool"

You are lost in a little maze of automatically generated files, all
different.
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