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.
	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. Ones 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://kaolin.unice.fr/pub/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.


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, 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, William Clinger for his expand syntax
implementation and 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'm integrated inside
Bigloo, and Bernard Serpette who is the author of the JVM back-end.





