04/16/02 Update: Guile is now officially installed on the Suns and to be found at /usr/local/gnu/bin/guile. This version comes also with readline support. Hence, you are now free to skip the first step below.

I found that Guile (a GNU implementation of Scheme) is far more friendly to use then the somewhat aged MIT Scheme installation on our Suns. If you want to use Guile instead of MIT Scheme, you are free to use the installation within my home directory:

1. PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH (the latter if you are interested in readline support) have to be extended. This depends on the shell you are using:
   • C shell (default shell):

     setenv PATH $PATH:/home/fac/afb/bin
     setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /home/fac/afb/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
     

   • Bourne shell, ksh, and bash:

     PATH=$PATH:/home/fac/afb/bin
     LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/fac/afb/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
     export PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
     

   Note that my lib directory has to be placed in front of LD_LIBRARY_PATH as otherwise outdated libraries take precedence.

2. If you are interested in readline support, you should add following instructions to your ~/.guile file which is read by guile during initialization time:

   (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
   (activate-readline)
   

   Your LD_LIBRARY_PATH wasn't set correctly if you receive an error message on (use-modules (ice-9 readline)).

3. In addition, you should configure ~/.inputrc to select your preferences. If you prefer vi commands, you might want to have

   set editing-mode vi
   

   otherwise

   set editing-mode emacs
   

4. The default stack size is ridiculous. You might want to enlarge it. This can be done by adding following command to your ~/.guile file:

   (debug-set! stack 1000000)
   

5. Invoke guile :-)

   Online documentation is available (stolen from the current CVS tree, it might be a little bit out of sync with the latest stable release of Guile that I have installed). (help) might be helpful as well.