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The source code needs to be documented more thoroughly if Gambit is to thrive as an open-source project.  This is something a lot of people could work on, but Marc would probably need to do most of the work for the compiler.
 
The source code needs to be documented more thoroughly if Gambit is to thrive as an open-source project.  This is something a lot of people could work on, but Marc would probably need to do most of the work for the compiler.
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====Code-anlaysis tools====
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A call-graph printer, for example, would make the system sources much easier to understand and change.  It might also speed up the work of writing documentation (as mentioned above).  Ideally the compiler is already doing this kind of analysis and the data just needs to be printed out.
  
 
====Identify and Implement Important Optimizations====
 
====Identify and Implement Important Optimizations====

Revision as of 23:20, 6 March 2008

This page lists suggestions for new features. We hope it will be useful for brainstorming by the user community to help direct the further development of Gambit. Suggestions should include a description of the feature and a motivation.

Support for long (> 8192) lists in apply

Even if it has to be slow for large lists, it would be preferable to having to change the way you code for certain applications.


Delimited continuations

Would allow creating continuations that don't capture the current-input/output-ports and are serializable (useful for Termite, web-continuations, etc).

Integration of Termite with Snow

Handle namespaces, provide null (single threaded) implementations of more general operations (pmap, mapreduce etc) for other hosts.

Multiple Processes on Multiple Cores

Automate the creation of nodes on the same machine to allow simpler use of multiple cores from within Termite (ie more like Erlang). This should also load the correct environment.

Real Time and Generational Garbage Collection

Support multiple garbage collection strategies. Ideally garbage collection strategy could be decided at runtime but implementation details may force that decision to be specified at build time.

Support for R6RS

Support for running R6RS programs would be really useful and make it much easier to share code with other implementations (which promised to be R6RS compliant soon).

While there are many things I don't like about R6RS, I would like to see the macro and module system integrated into Gambit, specifically so that Meroon can be rewritten to use these features. I think Meroon is in a design space sweet spot, and with Meroon's close integration into the Gambit runtime, a better macro/module implementation would make it quite appealing. Perhaps Gambit could use Andre van Tonder's implementation, but I haven't yet looked at the license. (Brad Lucier)

FFI Improvement

Better and higher level support for the foreign function interface for C/C++. This could include some easy ways to create struct/class objects, easy way to access their inner elements, simple foreign struct/class declaration, etc...

Also, a simplification of the Gambit->C and C->Gambit type translation process. Instead of having to define some very low level C macros, it would be interesting to have a simplified form which could cover most usage of such type translations and speed up the developpement process.

It would be nice to be able to pass SRFI-4 style vectors as float*, int*, etc.

Better debugger support for locally bound procedures

When displaying a procedure, Gambit's debugger already scans all the global variables to try and find one that is bound to that procedure so it can display the variable's name instead of just a generic #<procedure>. This is very usefull but it would be nice to have a similar mecanism for locally bound procedures (internal define, named let, ...).

Native / pre-emptive threads

Given the fact that the world is moving from faster processors to parallel processing, I believe that support for true native threads is increasingly critical. Eventually, no programming environment will survive that doesn't support native threads. Support for multiple processes is good but pales in comparison to light weight, native, pre-emptive thread support. PThreads would be a good, portable way to go here.

Continued support for the Windows environment

Few programmers like Windows less than I do. However, Windows is in fact an environment we have to deal with. Continued and native (Microsoft C) support enables programmers to use Linux at home and Windows at work. If Windows is not supported then none of the cool stuff developed at home can be used at work thus reducing the excitement and usefulness of developing cool stuff at home.

Better Documentation of Compiler and Runtime Internals

The source code needs to be documented more thoroughly if Gambit is to thrive as an open-source project. This is something a lot of people could work on, but Marc would probably need to do most of the work for the compiler.

Code-anlaysis tools

A call-graph printer, for example, would make the system sources much easier to understand and change. It might also speed up the work of writing documentation (as mentioned above). Ideally the compiler is already doing this kind of analysis and the data just needs to be printed out.

Identify and Implement Important Optimizations

More inline expansions

Inline expansion and run-time bindings have proved very effective compilation strategies for standard functions. Perhaps the majority of the work has been done, but there are still opportunities to be identified and implemented (e.g., eqv?, read-char, and write-char for starters). Two-list map is common enough that it should be inlined, as one-list map already is.

Efficient compilation of quasiquote

Right now, any use of quasiquotation results in calls to the built-in routines ##quasi-cons, ##quasi-list, ##quasi-list->vector, etc. When I changed

(define (make-node left val right) `#(node ,left ,val ,right))

to

(define (make-node left val right) (vector 'node left val right))

in the Ikarus version of the alioth binary trees benchmark, for example, and compiled the code with Gambit, the run time went from 40 seconds to 8 seconds. Runtimes shouldn't depend so much on different ways of doing the same thing.

(48 hours later.) This should be fixed by checkin 95. That was fast!

Faster unsafe numerical inline expansions

The last operation in the unfolded code for (op x1 x2 x3 ...) when (declare (not safe)) should be a call to ##op, not op.

Deforestation

A pass to eliminate code generation for unused intermediate structures (cons cells, small vector, ...).

Implement SRFI-63

SRFI 63, "Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Arrays", is the latest in the evolution of strongly-typed multidimensional array/matrix types in scheme, superseding SRFI-47 and including all SRFI-4 data types. Gambit already provides SRFI-4 support for homogeneous arrays; this would add on a few new types and allow for multidimensional operations. Coupled with the FFI, it might make it easy to link with BLAS/LAPACK and other optimized numeric libraries to allow gambit to be a first-class numerical processing and data analysis environment.

Graphical Extensions

  • Support for any kind of graphical library, low level like X, or high level like SDL, in order to generate pictures or animations.
  • Graphical external representation of data structures, with boxes and arrows, à la UML, or like some graphical debuggers. Useful to represent trees, cyclic data structure, and for debugging too.

Error-free loading

The possibility to load or include a file, without having any error when the file can't be read or does not exist.

(unsafe-include "/path/to/inexistant.file") 

would just return #f, or not be expanded, or even better

(include-with-exception-handler
  (lambda (err)
    (cond ...))
  "/path/to/file")

Tying Data and files

The ability to tie some data structure to a file would be greatly appreciated. For example,

(define h (make-tied-hash "/tmp/myhash.scm"))
(tied-hash-set! h 'foo 42)
^D
cat /tmp/myhash.scm
foo => 42

or a binary format or it could even dump its own code...

And since we have procedures serialisation thanks to termite, functions too could be tied....

The aim is to simplify file managing, when reading/writing data stored in S-exprs, such as a config file or else...


TCP/IP interpreter

Couldn't we run a session of the interpreter on a socket/pipe ? It would enable calling gambit easily from other programs, from scripts, etc. It could use several connexions for default input/ouput ports and result port, or reply with answers like

(STDOUT 42) (STDERR "hello") (VALUE 3.141592)

meaning that it wrote 42 on the standard output (with DISPLAY), the string hello on the standard error (with PP) and that the value returned by the call was π.