Criteria for including other implementations

[jpellegrini]

What would be the criteria for listing Scheme implementations on the table?
I see that Biwa and Cyclone are missing, and these are actively maintained; and there are others in the table that don't seem to be updated for years.

[lassik]

There are no particular criteria AFAIK; people just added what they needed. Cyclone and Biwa should be added, but the table will get quite hard to read with more implementations. We should think of some criteria for what to show by default, and some user interface for showing and hiding particular implementations from the table. Maybe checkboxes / buttons?

[jpellegrini]

I agree with having checkboxes for choosing implementations. As to default criteria, recent development activity is the only objective criterion I can think of.

[lassik]

I like that idea since it rewards implementations for their work.

[jpellegrini]

That means Scheme48 and Ypsilon wouldn't be listed by default. I think the Scheme48 authors mentioned that they won't be working on it anymore. And Ypsilon hasn't been updated in several years.

[lassik]

I agree that Scheme48 and Ypsilon are more of historical interest nowadays. Though still inspiring and usable.

[jpellegrini]

I agree that Scheme48 and Ypsilon are more of historical interest nowadays. Though still inspiring and usable.

Yes - I do think they should be listed, but maybe not by default... It's a SRFi-support table anyway. One who's looking at that table is likely deciding which implementation to use for a project, and I wouldn't recommend either of those two, not because they're not good - they're both excellent - but because they're not actively maintained.

[jpellegrini]

for a project

Or to start learning; or to pick SRFI code and see how it's implemented in different Schemes (I do that). But I guess having Biwa and Cyclone would be more important, although I'm not really sure.

What do you think?

[lassik]

It would probably be most useful to list actively maintained implementations geared toward writing practical programs first.

[jpellegrini]

Ok, so maybe not Biwa, but Cyclone?
Although Biwa seems quite easy to use for a beginner looking for a simple REPL.

[lassik]

I don't have an opinion on that. Ideally we would have some kind of objective criteria, but we don't yet.

[jpellegrini]

If all implementations had public git (or any version control) access, it would be easy to come up with a "commit volume" creterion.
But some (like Tinyscheme) don't... So an objective criteria is really hard to define. Having released a version in the last 3 years?

[lassik]

True. Date of latest release is one criterion. But if we sort by some kind of date, the order would change quite often.

Unless we filter by date, and those implementations that pass the filter (e.g. top 10 by date), we sort alphabetically.

[jpellegrini]

Unless we filter by date, and those implementations that pass the filter (e.g. top 10 by date), we sort alphabetically.

That's what I meant, but I think I didn't make it clear... :)

[jpellegrini]

Vicare is also not being developed anymore (it's stated in their webpage).