Loko Scheme: bare metal optimizing Scheme compiler(scheme.fail)
165 pointsby dTal4 months ago5 comments
  • pkphilip4 months ago
    This looks nice and very interesting that this runs on bare metal. Is more documentation / tutorials available anywhere?

    EDIT: Found the documentation: https://scheme.fail/manual/loko.html

  • pjmlp4 months ago
    Nice achievement, building on the foregone dreams of Lisp powered workstations.

    We need more efforts like these and less yet another UNIX clone in C.

  • JonChesterfield4 months ago
    > Loko’s runtime uses concurrency based on Concurrent ML.

    That one could be a big deal.

    https://scheme.fail/manual/loko.html#Concurrency

    The docs don't mention channels and say that fibres are built on limited continuations (call/cc) which suggests missing some of the clever stuff in CML (e.g. that threads deadlocked on a channel get garbage collected)

    • bjoli4 months ago
      While being heavily inspired guile-fibers, it seems to not actually be parallel.

      Anyway, I would say it is actually the nicest way to write concurrent programs. It supports you and helps you to not shoot yourself in the foot, while also staying out of the way.

  • mark_l_watson4 months ago
    I also like that it runs on bare metal. I wonder is it builds and runs on macOS? (I am on a mobile device and can’t check it myself.)

    Off topic, but I love the design of the linked web site.

    • drob5184 months ago
      After skimming the docs and the site, I suspect this is x86-only for now. No mention of ARM or other processor architectures and the listed hardware support suggests a PC hardware target. You could probably cross compile on an Apple silicon Mac and run under emulation (e.g., QEMU).
      • vkdev04 months ago
        That's right, currently only the x86-64 architecture is supported.
  • wkjagt4 months ago
    This is super interesting. I kind of want to use this to turn one of my old laptops into a Scheme machine. But from the docs I think on bare metal it's only usable over serial.
    • vkdev04 months ago
      I did successfully run the bare-metal Loko image on the ThinkPad x230 with GUI, mouse and keyboard access.
      • wkjagt4 months ago
        OOh nice, I am certainly going to try it then!
        • vkdev04 months ago
          To have a working keyboard with en-us keys layout and LAN (Intel's NIC card) you need to build image from the latest development version, it might be an EFI or a legacy MBR image. The REPL is only interpreted, it does not have runtime bindings (I mean you can't change the running system state because REPL creates new library instances) and it does not compile at runtime.
          • wkjagt4 months ago
            I know what I'll be playing with this week :)
    • pkphilip4 months ago
      It can be made to work over Qemu