6. Obtaining and Installing Guile

Here is the information you will need to get and install Guile and extra packages and documentation you might need or find interesting.

6.1 The Basic Guile Package
6.2 Packages not shipped with Guile

6.1 The Basic Guile Package

Guile can be obtained from the main GNU archive site ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu or any of its mirrors. The file will be named guile-version.tar.gz. The current version is 1.5.7, so the file you should grab is:

ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/guile-1.5.7.tar.gz

To unbundle Guile use the instruction

zcat guile-1.5.7.tar.gz | tar xvf -

which will create a directory called `guile-1.5.7' with all the sources. You can look at the file `INSTALL' for detailed instructions on how to build and install Guile, but you should be able to just do

cd guile-1.5.7 ./configure make install

This will install the Guile executable `guile', the Guile library `libguile.a' and various associated header files and support libraries. It will also install the Guile tutorial and reference manual.

Since this manual frequently refers to the Scheme "standard", also known as R5RS, or the "Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme", we have included the report in the Guile distribution; See section `Introduction' in Revised(5) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. This will also be installed in your info directory.

6.2 Packages not shipped with Guile

We ship the Guile tutorial and reference manual with the Guile distribution. Since the Scheme standard (R5RS) is a stable document, we ship that too.

Here are references (usually World Wide Web URLs) to some other freely redistributable documents and packages which you might find useful if you are using Guile.

SCSH

the Scheme Shell. Gary Houston has ported SCSH to Guile. The relevant chapter (see section 46. The Scheme shell (scsh)) has references to the SCSH web page with all its documentation.

SLIB

a portable Scheme library maintained by Aubrey Jaffer. SLIB can be obtained by ftp from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/jacal/.

The SLIB package should be unpacked somewhere in Guile's load path. It will typically be unpacked in `/usr/local/share/guile/site', so that it will be `/usr/local/share/guile/site/slib'.

Guile might have been installed with a different prefix, in which case the load path can be checked from inside the interpreter with:

guile> %load-path ("/usr/local/share/guile/site" "/usr/local/share/guile/1.3a" "/usr/local/share/guile" ".")

The relevant chapter (see section 37. SLIB) has details on how to use SLIB with Guile.

JACAL

a symbolic math package by Aubrey Jaffer. The latest version of Jacal can be obtained from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/jacal/, and should be unpacked in `/usr/local/share/guile/site/slib' so that it will be in `/usr/local/share/guile/site/slib/jacal'.

The relevant section (see section 37.2 JACAL) has details on how to use Jacal.