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<h2>vx-scheme</h2>
<h4>A Scheme interpreter for VxWorks.</h4>
<p align="right">[ <a href="index.html">Home</a> ]</p>
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<h3>Release History</h3>
<table><tr><td class="announce">Announcing the fifth public release,
<b>0.7</b>. The long-awaited (by me, anyway) bytecode compiler is
here, with some cool featurs described on
the <a href="compiler.html">compiler page</a>. The compiler is
written in Scheme and bootstraps itself using the interpreter. By the
way, the 0.7 interpreter is faster too, as you can see on
the <a href="benchmark.html">benchmark page</a>. Other enhancements:
<ul>
<li><b><font color="#cc0000">14% faster</font> interpreter and
<font color="#cc0000">47% faster</font> compiler:</b> The interpreter
got faster due to just general tuning. The compiler helps a great
deal for computationally-bound programs.</li>
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<li><b>New functions:</b> By analogy with Common LISP, <code>bound?</code>,
<code>nconc</code> and <code>symbol-value</code>. For utility purposes,
<code>getcwd</code>, <code>chdir</code>, <code>display*</code> (which
displays each of its arguments in turn,
and <code>primitive-procedure?</code> (for recognizing procedures
produced by compilation).</li>
<li><b>Hosted by Google!</b> I was maintaining the project with CVS,
but decided to try my current employer's new
<a href="http://code.google.com/hosting/"code hosting</a>ne facility,
based on <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">Subversion</a>.
Click for the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/vx-scheme/">vx-scheme
project page</a>. You can get my current working source from the
trunk or work with version 0.7, which as been tagged as
<a href="http://vx-scheme.googlecode.com/svn/tags/v0.7/">v0.7</a>.
<li><b>Compatibility?</b> I can't really say that this version runs
with VxWorks since I haven't tried
it. <a href="http://www.windriver.com/">Wind River</a>, my former
employer, used to have a Tornado Prototyper you could download to
experiment with things like this, but they haven't done that in a
while. Likewise, I don't have any Win32 machines in the house any
more, having switched to Mac. The code does run fine on Mac OS X,
Fedora, and Ubuntu.</li>
</ul>
Consult the change log for more information.
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<p><p>
<table><tr><td class="announce">Announcing the fourth public release,
<b>0.6</b>. Improvements from 0.5 involve some performance enhancements
achieved by tweaking the VM.
<ul>
<li><b><font color="#cc0000">39% faster</font>:</b> This release was
motivated by noticing that the test suite was spending most of its
time collecting garbage. Obviously, reducing garbage generation and
simplifying garbage collection would improve performance, and that was
done in this release, with the following two (internal) changes: </li>
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<li><b>Win32 port:</b> Project files are provided so vx-scheme can
compile ith Visual Studio .NET.</li>
<li><b>Short Integers:</b> Internally, an integer that can fit in 24
bits is now stored as a special kind of pointer with no cell space
allocated. This means that computations with small integers can
proceed with much less garbage generated. (Many classic LISP systems
use this trick.) The short arithmetic automatically expands to 32
bits when necessary, preserving the full range of 32-bit arithmetic
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with no programmer intervention needed. Still no arbitrary-precision
arithmetic, though.</li>
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<li><b>Uniform cell-size:</b> Versions before this one had the
concept of single- and double-size cells. While this saved a
small amount of memory, it greatly complicated the garbage collector.</li>
</ul>
Consult the change log for more information.
</td></tr></table>
<p><p>
<table><tr><td class="announce">Changes from <b>0.4</b> to <b>0.5</b>:
<ul> <li><b>Property
lists:</b> You can now say <code>(put 'symbol 'key value)</code> to
make a property association "key->value" on the given symbol, and
<code>(get 'symbol 'key)</code> to retrieve the value. (NB: getting
a property that doesn't exist will return <code>#f</code>, rather
than <code>()</code> as in Common Lisp.)</li>
<li><b>Perl-style vector operations:</b> New functions
<code>vector-shift!, vector-unshift!, vector-push!,</code> and
<code>vector-pop!</code> are provided. Shift and unshift work at the
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left side of a vector, push and pop at the right. Vectors will
grow and shrink as needed.</li>
<li><b>More testcases:</b>Three new testcases, adding 500 more lines
to the suite.</li>
</ul>
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<p>I've started writing a <b>bytecode compiler</b>, which has been an
interesting exercise. If that interests you drop me a
<a href="mailto:colin.smith@gmail.com">note</a>!</p>
<h3>Download</h3>
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The easy-to-build source distribution is available here:
<ul>
<li>Tar/gzip format: <code><a href=
"//files.scheme.org/vx-scheme-0.7.tgz">vx-scheme-0.7.tgz</a></code></li>
</ul>
Previous versions can be downloaded as well, but I don't recommend
them. Newer releases always pass a stronger test suite than older
ones. The previous releases are 0.6
[<a href="//files.scheme.org/vx-scheme-0.6.tgz">tgz</a>],
0.5
[<a href="//files.scheme.org/vx-scheme-0.5.tgz">tgz</a>],
0.4
[<a href="//files.scheme.org/vx-scheme-0.4.tgz">tgz</a>],
and 0.3 (the first release)
[<a href="//files.scheme.org/vx-scheme-0.3.tgz">tgz</a>].
<p>You can contact me at <a href=
"mailto:colin.smith@gmail.com">colin.smith@gmail.com</a> with any
questions or observations. For all I know, I'm the only person out
there who's interested in Scheme and VxWorks simultaneously. If you
are too, drop me a note!</p>
<h3>Documentation</h3>
<p>See the <a href="index.html">main page</a>.</p>
<h3>A word about the coding convention</h3>
<p>This code uses the VxWorks coding convention, used extensively at
Wind River. The brace indenting is a bit unorthodox. At Wind, the
party line was always "they're nobody's favorite indenting rules, but
we all use them, and therein lies the value." True enough. Now that
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I've left WR to work at
<a href="http://www.google.com/"><font color="#0000ff"><b>G</font><font color="#ff0000">o</font><font color="#cccc00">o</font><font color="#0000ff">g</font><font color="#009900">l</font><font color="#ff0000">e</font></a></b>,
I've been tempted to reformat the code in a more mainstream style,
though. Maybe next version.</p>
<h3>Installation Notes</h3>
<p class="section">For VxWorks:</p>
<p>Just unpack the archive anywhere you like. A Tornado workspace
containing two projects is provided in tornado/vx-scheme.wsp. The
first project, "target-shell", will build a VxSim executable that
has enough C++ features selected to host the Scheme interpreter.
The second is the interpreter itself. Build them both.</p>
<p><b>Note:</b> For the present, vx-scheme only runs on the target
shell: starting it from <code>windsh</code> will only confuse
things.</p>
<p>Start the simulator you just built. Once it's launched you can
use a script in ../startup that will load the Scheme image. (The
startup script is in the parent directory of the directory where
the sim starts in case you define new builds on your own.)</p>
<blockquote>
<pre>
<code><font class="output">-&gt;</font> &lt;../startup
<font class="output">cd "../../vx-scheme/SIMNTgnu"
value = 0 = 0x0
ld &lt; vx-scheme.out
value = 30727944 = 0x1d4df08 = _dtors + 0x14
cd "../../../testcases"
value = 0 = 0x0
-&gt;</font>
</code>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p class="section">For UNIX:</p>
<p>For UNIX-like systems (FreeBSD, Cygwin, etc.) there's an
ordinary Makefile in the <code>src</code> directory of the
distribution. Just say make or gmake (whatever it takes to launch
GNU make on your system) in that directory. This will build a
"vx-scheme" executable configured for use on your host system.</p>
<h3>Test Suite</h3>
<p class="section">For VxWorks:</p>
<p>To run the test suite on VxWorks, follow the installation steps
above and then, in your simulator window, do</p>
<blockquote>
<pre>
<code><font class="output">-&gt;</font> scheme
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<font class="output">=&gt;</font>
</code>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>The prompt changes to <code>=&gt;</code> when reading Scheme
expressions. The startup script set the working directory to the
place where the test suite lies so now we need only say:</p>
<blockquote>
<pre>
<code><font class="output">=&gt;</font> (load "vx-test.scm")
<font class="output">PASS: sort
PASS: factor
PASS: object->string
PASS: r4rstest
PASS: pi
PASS: sieve
PASS: cf
PASS: series
PASS: ack
PASS: scheme
PASS: dynamic
PASS: earley
PASS: maze
PASS: dderiv
PASS: boyer
PASS: puzzle
</font>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<p><b>Note:</b> Running the test suite defines a lot of symbols. In
particular, "i" is defined, which masks the VxWorks definition.
It's probably best to ^X the simulator and start over after running
the suite.</p>
<p class="section">For UNIX:</p>
<p>To run the test suite for UNIX: after building with make (or
gmake) in the unix directory, just do a <code>"make test"</code>.
<p><b>Note:</b> The "good" files are slightly different for
VxWorks: in that case, expected to fail the "mult-float-print-test"
on VxWorks and the "good" file contains these failures, so the
suite will "pass". But as explained elsewhere we just take what the
native I/O system gives us.</p>
<h3>Roadmap</h3>
<p>Now that the bytecode compiler (whose design is
indebted to that given by Peter Norvig in <a
href="http://www.norvig.com/paip.html">Paradigms of Artificial
Intelligence Programming</a>) is complete, I don't have any big plans.
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Feel free to write if you're thinking of using this code for anything
at all!
<p class="quiet">Copyright &copy; 2002 Colin Smith.</p>
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