Overview

Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary.

Revised⁷ Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme

Meevax is an implementation of Lisp-1 programming language, supporting the latest Scheme language standard and some SRFIs (SRFI; Scheme requests for implementation). This implementation is focused on integration with modern C++ and practicality: it not only works as an interpreter with support for the latest Scheme standard, but also provides a flexible Lisp-1 kernel as a C++ library. The library is installed as a CMake package for easy linking, and any C++ classes can be used from Lisp-1 scripts via simple stubs.

Features

Traditional SECD machine [2].
Low-level hygienic macro system, known as syntactic closures [4, 6] and explicit renaming [5]. For these, the well-known macro transformers sc-macro-transformer, rsc-macro-transformer and er-macro-transformer from the library (meevax macro-transformer) are provided. Note that these are non-Scheme standards.
C++ friendly precise garbage collection [10, 11]

Standards

Meevax can be used as an interpreter that supports the Scheme standard specified by the following report:

Revised⁴ Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R4RS) [5]
Revised⁵ Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R5RS) [9]
Revised⁷ Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R7RS) [13]

Procedures for each standard are provided by the following R7RS-style libraries:

Language	Library name
R4RS	`(scheme r4rs)`
R5RS	`(scheme r5rs)`
R7RS	`(scheme base)` `(scheme box)` `(scheme case-lambda)` `(scheme char)` `(scheme complex)` `(scheme cxr)` `(scheme eval)` `(scheme file)` `(scheme flonum)` `(scheme inexact)` `(scheme lazy)` `(scheme list)` `(scheme load)` `(scheme process-context)` `(scheme read)` `(scheme repl)` `(scheme time)` `(scheme write)`

SRFIs

Number	Title	Library name	Note
0	Feature-based conditional expansion construct	`(srfi 0)`	R7RS 4.2.1
1	List Library	`(srfi 1)`	`(scheme list)`
4	Homogeneous numeric vector datatypes	`(srfi 4)`	R7RS 6.9
6	Basic String Ports	`(srfi 6)`	R7RS 6.13
8	receive: Binding to multiple values	`(srfi 8)`
9	Defining Record Types	`(srfi 9)`	R7RS 5.5
10	#, external form
11	Syntax for receiving multiple values	`(srfi 11)`	R7RS 4.2.2
16	Syntax for procedures of variable arity	`(srfi 16)`	R7RS 4.2.9
23	Error reporting mechanism	`(srfi 23)`	R7RS 6.11
30	Nested Multi-line Comments		R7RS 2.2
31	A special form rec for recursive evaluation	`(srfi 31)`
34	Exception Handling for Programs	`(srfi 34)`	R7RS 6.11
38	External Representation for Data With Shared Structure	`(srfi 38)`	R7RS 6.13.3
39	Parameter objects	`(srfi 39)`	R7RS 4.2.6
45	Primitives for Expressing Iterative Lazy Algorithms	`(srfi 45)`	R7RS 4.2.5
62	S-expression comments		R7RS 2.2
78	Lightweight testing	`(srfi 78)`	Except `check-ec`
87	=> in case clauses		R7RS 4.2.1
98	An interface to access environment variables	`(srfi 98)`	R7RS 6.14
111	Boxes	`(srfi 111)`	`(scheme box)`
144	Flonums	`(srfi 144)`	`(scheme flonum)`
149	Basic syntax-rules template extensions	`(srfi 149)`	R7RS 4.3.2

Installation

Requirements

GCC (>= 11.4.0) or Clang (>= 14.0.0)
CMake (>= 3.22.1)
GNU Make
GNU Binutils
GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library (GMP)

Releases

Latest release is here.

Instruction

First, generate a Makefile using CMake with the following command:

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cd build

Then, select one of the following targets and make it according to your purpose. In most cases, make install will be the one you choose.

Target	Description
`all`	Build shared-library `libmeevax.0.5.304.so` and executable `meevax`.
`install`	Copy files into `/usr/local` directly.
`package`	Generate debian package `meevax_0.5.304_amd64.deb` (only Ubuntu). The generated package can be installed by `sudo apt install build/meevax_0.5.304_amd64.deb`.
`test`	Test executable `meevax`. This target requires Valgrind to be installed.
`uninstall`	Remove files copied to `/usr/local` directly by target `install`.

Usage

Usage:
  meevax [OPTION...] [FILE...]

Options:
  -e, --evaluate=STRING  read and evaluate STRING on interaction-environment
  -h, --help             display this help and exit
  -i, --interactive      enter an interactive session
  -l, --load=FILE        load FILE into interaction-environment
  -v, --version          display version information and exit
  -w, --write=STRING     same as `(write (read STRING))`