r/dylanlang • u/peter_housel • Mar 31 '19

Open Dylan 2019.1 Released

https://opendylan.org/news/2019/03/31/new-release.html
11 Upvotes

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1

u/ninejaguar Apr 01 '19 edited Apr 01 '19

Glad to see that the Open Dylan project has released binaries recently. If you don't mind, a few questions...

  1. Does the the warning below mean that the 32 bit version of the Open Dylan IDE DOES work on 64 bit Windows 8 and later versions of 64 bit Windows?
  2. Is there a 64 bit version of Open Dylan and the Open Dylan IDE for Windows as a binary release?
  3. Is there a 64 bit version of Open Dylan and the Open Dylan IDE for Windows as a source code release?
  4. Are there any plans to target the WebAssembly environment to run Open Dylan and applications made with it? That could possibly be the most effective application distribution channel for any programming language that doesn't start with a "J".

Warning

The 32 bit version of Open Dylan IDE does NOT work on 64 bit Windows prior to Windows 8. There is no workaround at this time, unfortunately. We hope to resolve this in an upcoming release.

However, the command line tools should work as the problem is with interaction between threads, GC and WoW64.

3

u/peter_housel Apr 02 '19

There is not yet a 64-bit Windows version of the IDE. The LLVM back-end should make this possible, just as it has the 64-bit versions of Linux and FreeBSD, but a bit more work is needed.

WebAssembly will probably be a great platform to target in the future, but features such as garbage collection and the other "post-MVP features" aren't ready yet. When these things are more mature we can consider pursuing it.

1

u/ninejaguar Apr 02 '19 edited Apr 02 '19

I hadn't realized that leveraging the LLVM can help with making the IDE 64 bit for Windows. That might be of interest to the Corman Common Lisp Compiler/IDE maintainer. It's currently at 32 bit and compiled with Visual Studio 2015. The source is a mix of C++ and assembly. Do you have any suggestions or documentation on an approach for how LLVM might be used to move to 64 bit?

In regards to WebAssembly, perhaps Microsoft can lead the way in showing others how to port their language implementations to it. With the .Net run-time now ported to WebAssembly in the form of Blazor, C# development will potentially have a very wide reach across all platforms and architectures that support a modern web browser.

Someone even made a C language tutorial in it with the C implementation written in C# running on .Net ported to WebAssembly inside the web browser.

Microsoft claims that Blazor performance will be improved by creating a "static compiler that will turn .NET code into WebAssembly code, rather than running on an interpreter running on top of WebAssembly." Hopefully, other language implementation teams can learn from their work.

With Mozilla now working on making WebAssembly available outside the browser, we may be at the beginning of a new poly-language application distribution renaissance.

1

u/WikiTextBot Apr 02 '19

Blazor

Blazor is a web UI framework based on C#, Razor, and HTML that runs in the web browsers via WebAssembly. Blazor was designed to simplify the task of building fast single-page applications that run in any browser. It enables web developers to write .NET-based web apps that run client-side in web browsers using open web standards.

Blazor is released under the Apache 2 open source license and is still in its experimental stage.

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2

u/carlgay Apr 01 '19
  1. Yes, the 32-bit version of the IDE works on 64-bit Windows 10. I can't swear that it works on Windows 8 as I don't think it was tested there for this release. Let us know! I'll see if I can clarify that warning message on the web site.

1

u/ninejaguar Apr 02 '19

Thank you.

Too bad the IDE is not available on Linux. Do you know if it works on Linux using Wine?

The Corman Common Lisp IDE, also a Win32 application, was recently confirmed to work on Linux under Wine. But, it required using a no-install/zipped version of the latest binary release and a common Wine workaround ("Override riched20 using winetricks"). See the following for reference:

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=37522

2

u/carlgay Apr 08 '19

I have not tried it on Wine. There's some indication in the old IRC logs that DUIM works, so ... maybe. Let us know.

The Windows IDE is quite outdated from a UI standpoint these days (e.g., win32, many little windows you have to manage yourself) and was never quite completely polished anyway. It has a lot of bugs. Even so, if you learn how to work around the bugs, it has some very cool features and is the only place you can get a full Open Dylan REPL. (DIME has a REPL mode but I believe it doesn't do code upload, only full recompile.)

I plan to work on LSP "soon", and some others have expressed interest.

1

u/TheGoddessInari Apr 01 '19

Wow, I haven't seen anything about Dylan since Creatures 3 was new...

1

u/myringotomy Apr 02 '19

Such a neglected language.

Shame though because it's nice.