Ekaitz Zarraga 👹
Recently I made two #guile contributions:
- A rewrite of `(ice-9 peg string-peg)` that supports PEG properly (before it didn't) and also supports [^...] syntax, which is very present in modern PEG.
- Finished a port of the JIT compilation library for RISC-V I started 3 years ago and tested it successfully on Guile, in real hardware.
I don't feel any of those are ever going to be included in the project, and that's very discouraging.
Guile needs more people.
Maybe more #Guix people?
Ludovic Courtès
@ekaitz_zarraga Ahem, I think I did answer to the PEG patches, didn’t I?
I haven’t checked the next round yet, and it’s already been way too long, and really the problem is that nobody else is looking at the backlog currently, but… we’ll get there.
Now, I agree that there’s a real issue to be solved in Guile.
Ekaitz Zarraga 👹
It's funny because the reason why the first was broken and needed to be fixed and the second was abandoned 3 years ago is the same that makes me feel this is never going to be merged.
There have been efforts to before improve the PEG module, but no answer was given to them.
3 years ago I passed all the lightening tests but I didn't finish the work, because I didn't know how. With a little of help, we could've done it. I got no help and I abandoned until I had the knowledge to finish.
Ekaitz Zarraga 👹
@civodul I think a good improvement to Guile's issues could be to motivate more Guix developers to take part on Guile (I'll put the ML on fire again with some essay about why we should pay Guile more attention).
I think many people, and now I'm talking more in general, are afraid to take part in the development and the maintenance of a programming language, probably because the covers of the books that explain them have a very scary dragon.
But this we need to improve.
Ekaitz Zarraga 👹
@civodul Yes, but as an special case because you know me and follow me in here and you saw I did it, and I bothered you in IRC about it.
We cannot rely on you being nice to people. It's great, don't get me wrong. But in order to keep you being nice for long time, we cannot squeeze the niceness too hard out of you.
Am I explaining myself properly here?
Ekaitz Zarraga 👹
@baleine @civodul Good question. Many parts of Guile are written in Guile, but you can build the whole thing without having a previous Guile, if I'm not mistaken.
It's bootstrapped from some C code I think.
Noé Lopez
@ekaitz_zarraga @civodul Is Guile mostly C or is it booststrapped ?
Ludovic Courtès
@ekaitz_zarraga It’s definitely an elitist domain. But if you look at the patches on bug-guile, the vast majority is about fixing/improving libraries and bindings—HTTP, POSIX, etc. That’s accessible to large audience of hackers.
(Now of course there are also hard-core hackers who port the JIT to another architectures, but that’s another story. :-))
Ludovic Courtès
@ekaitz_zarraga @baleine Correct, see https://www.wingolog.org/archives/2016/01/11/the-half-strap-self-hosting-and-guile
Ludovic Courtès
@baleine I think it’s not about being welcoming but about being familiar.
There are social norms associated with these tools that younger people may be unfamiliar with (says the old fart!).
If we want to attract younger folks, and we surely do, we should take that into account, just not at any cost (giving up on privacy, federation, and free software by going to Discord is not an option).
In the meantime, ask questions on IRC, there are nice folks! :-)
Noé Lopez
@ekaitz_zarraga @civodul The simple fact that you have to keep your IRC client open to receive messages makes it the only messaging app where you don't receive the messages. And e-mail is the only one where messages might go anywhere if you don't re-read your headers a bajillion times.
Noé Lopez
@ekaitz_zarraga @civodul I would contribute to guile but it seems like none of the 7 bugs this month have received a reply, not very welcoming :/
Furthermore, contributing to a new project involves many questions and asking them on e-mail or IRC feels like sending a message bottle down a dark pit, and this also goes for #guix.
I've seen projects be so much easier to get into: projects with associated discord servers are a huge success in this way. Providing a way for newcomers to actually chat with other users and maintainers in a friendly and casual manner.
In my experience, e-mail and IRC are extremely unwelcoming technologies to use.
翠星石
tyil
@baleine@piaille.fr Discord is easy and friendly for you because you're used to it and seemingly don't care much for the freedom aspect of free software. Those of us who do care for the freedom part would prefer literally any free software platform to join in on discussions.
As for being welcoming, I don't think anything beats IRC where you don't even need to register to drop by. Compared to every other option (that I know of), that's absurdly easy to get into. There's web chats available so you don't need to install any software either.
It honestly sounds more like you mean to say "e-mail and IRC are not familiar to me, therefore I don't like them", rather than call them unwelcoming.
Hyolobrika
Hyolobrika
Hyolobrika
tyil
@Hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net @baleine@piaille.fr I always forget XMPP can do it, probably because pretty much nothing supports it in practice. I've never encountered it myself, at the very least. It would've been interesting if that were a more widely available option, I think.
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