Egg Scheme
Overview
Egg Scheme is a work in progress by its author, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen. When the initial programming is done, it will be a compiler for the IEEE dialect of the Scheme programming language. Later, Egg Scheme will support R6RS Scheme.
Example
$ cat examples/fact.ss
(define (fact n)
(if (zero? n)
1
(* n (fact (- n 1)))))
(display (fact 30))
(newline)
$ eggscheme examples/fact.ss
265252859812191058636308480000000
$ eggscheme -ofact examples/fact.ss
$ ./fact
265252859812191058636308480000000
Naming
In Scheme, procedural macros allow Scheme code to be executed at compilation time, which results in a chicken-or-egg problem during bootstrapping a Scheme compiler whose code makes use of procedural macros. As there is already an implementation Scheme named CHICKEN, the name Egg for the implementation at hand was born. Despite both names appearing in the same context, Egg has nothing to do with CHICKEN (and vice versa).
Description
Egg Scheme compiles a scheme program, given by a set of source files, to native assembly, which is then assembled and linked to produce a standalone executable file by the host system’s assembler and linker. The executable dynamically links the Egg Scheme standard library.
Implementation Languages
Egg Scheme is implemented in IEEE Scheme, with its runtime implemented in ISO C23. It can be bootstrapped using an existing IEEE Scheme implementation, including itself.
Further Developments
As soon as the compiler is sufficiently efficient and produces sufficiently efficient code, the implementation of R6RS will begin. Once the R6RS implementation is stable, the implementation will be extended to support the good parts of R7RS and many SRFIs as well.
License
Egg Scheme is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Programs compiled with Egg Scheme or programs dynamically linking the Egg Scheme standard library are free to choose any license whatsoever.
Implementation Details
Implementation details that may be of general interest will be documented here.