This directory contains the source files of Bigloo, a Scheme system
which includes a compiler generating C code and Java classes and an
interpreter. Bigloo is the tool of choice for the construction of
small autonomous applications in Scheme. Bigloo is mostly conformant
to the Revised5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme with many
extensions:
        Rgc, a lex facility.
        Match, a pattern-matching compiler.
	Foreign languages interface (connection to C and to Java).
	Module language.
	Extension package system.
	An Lalr facility.
	An Object sytem.
        A thread library.
	DSSSL support.
	Unicode characters and strings.
	Process, Pipe and Socket support.

The new version of Bigloo (2.xx) comes now with an Integrated Development 
Environment (the Bee).

To install Bigloo, see the INSTALL file.  An ANSI C compiler is required.
The original version has been developped with GNU CC version 2.7.2
(Copyright (C) 1988, 1989, 1992 Free Software Foundation, Inc). The
Bigloo's boot requires around 25 MegaBytes of disk space. Once it is booted,
the Bigloo system can be reduced to about 7 MegaBytes.

To install Bigloo JVM (Java virtual machine byte code) back-end, the JDK 1.1
or more recent is required. The JVM machine must support the -noverify option
in order to execute Bigloo produced code. You also need an operational
zip utility to be installed. If either the JDK or the zip tool is missing,
the Bigloo JVM back-end can't be configured. 

*** Recent version of the systems can be downloaded from:

   ftp://ftp-sop.inria.fr/mimosa/fp/Bigloo

The compiler distribution consists of several directories:

	bin 		will contain the compiler executable.

	lib		will contain the Bigloo's libraries.

	comptime	contains the sources of the compiler.

	runtime 	contains the sources of the runtime system.

	examples	contains various Bigloo's examples.

	recette		contains compiler and runtime test programs.

	manuals     	contains the documentation of the Bigloo system.

	etc		contains a emacs-lisp file, an icon for emacs
			and the orignal package of the garbage collector.

	tools		contains severals tools files required for the boot
			of Bigloo.

	cigloo  	contains the sources of Cigloo, the C headers to 
			Bigloo headers translator.

	jigloo  	contains the sources of Jigloo, the JVM classes to 
			Bigloo headers translator.

	xlib		contains an example of connecting Bigloo and the 
                        X library.

	contrib		contains the list of currently available Bigloo
			contributions.

        bde             contains the source code of the Bee (the Bigloo IDE).

        bdb             contains the source code of the Bigloo Debugger.

        bmacs           contains the emacs-lisp part of the Bee.

        tutorials       contains a tutorial that briefly presents the 
                        capacities of the Bee.

	fthread		contains the Bigloo thread library.

	srfi		contains a Bigloo template Makefile for 
                        building SRFI libraries.

	bdl		contains the Bigloo development library.


I thank all the people who helped me while writing Bigloo, specialy
Hans J. Boehm (boehm@parc.xerox.com) who wrote the garbage collector,
Jean-Marie Geffroy (Jean-Marie.Geffroy@inria.fr) who found many bugs
and who has written `Match', Christan Queinnec
(Christian.Queinnec@inria.fr) for all his valuable comments and help,
Dominique Boucher (boucherd@IRO.UMontreal.CA) who wrote the Lalr
system and some contribs, Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice
(jfelice@cronosys.com) who added precedence operators to Lalr
grammars, Stephen J Bevan (bevan@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk),
Joris Heirbaut (pheirba@tinf3.vub.ac.be) who ported Bigloo under
Solaris, Drew Whitehouse (Drew.Whitehouse@anu.edu.au) who ported
Bigloo under Iris Indigo, Luc Moreau (moreau@montefiore.ulg.ac.be),
Pascal Petit (petit@litp.ibp.fr), Joel Masset (jmasset@dmi.ens.fr) and
Thierry Saura (Thierry.Saura@inria.fr), Laurent Bloch
(bloch@pasteur.fr), Christopher Oliver (oliver@fritz.co.traverse.com)
who pointed me bugs out, Thomas Neumann (tom@smart.bo.open.de) who
ported Bigloo under NeXT, Olaf Burkart
(burkart@zeus.informatik.rwth-aachen.de) for his comments on Bigloo,
John Gerard Malecki (john@vlibs.com) who point me out bugs and
suggested many improvements, David Gurr (gurr@snap.med.ge.com) who
points me out bugs, Rodrigo Vanegas (rv@cs.brown.edu) who suggested
some extensions, Kenneth Dwayne Ray (xray@owlnet.rice.edu) for all its
suggestions, Michael Sperber (sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de) and
Vincent Kieffer (kieffer@montefiore.ulg.ac.be) for the AIX port, Dave
Love (d.love@dl.ac.uk) which fix many bugs, Jacques Garrigue
(is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp) which helped me, Marcel Turcotte
(turcotte@IRO.UMontreal.CA), Alexandre Frey
(frey@lix.polytechnique.fr), Raj Manandhar
(Raj.Manandhar@msfc.nasa.gov) which points me bugs or documentation
problems, Alain Mellan that provide me with the `Format'
implementation, Dorai Sitaram for his portable implementation of Posix
regular expressions. I specially thank Barrie Stott who widely
contributes to the documentation improvements, Erick Gallesio for our
discussions and for all the code from STk that I have integrated
inside Bigloo, Frédéric Boussinot for his help collaboration to the
Bigloo thread library, Bernard Serpette who is the author of the JVM
back-end and the .NET code generator and Yannis Bres who has
developped the .NET runtime and who has improved the C and Java
runtimes. A special attention to Vladimir Tsichevski and Yann Dirson
for there unestimable help.
