re: using Shen ports

[Willi Riha]

I wanted to try Shen under some other platforms apart from Common Lisp and here is a log of my attempts.

Ruby Shen

1.  5 minutes downloading, uncompressing and reading Ruby Shen instructions

2.  3 minutes waiting for Ruby site to register.

3.  3 minutes downloading Ruby - tar.gz file requires me to install Winzip which I do not have.

Lost interest!

Chibi Shen

1.  5 minutes downloading, uncompressing and reading Scheme Shen instructions.

2.  5-10 minutes looking for chibi scheme on the internet.

3.  5-10 minutes downloading, uncompressing and Chibi Scheme reading instructions.

4.  Discover the instructions seems to assume Linux/Unix and require a C compiler.

Lost interest!.

Python Shen

The best of the lot; but still didn't get it to go.

1.  5 minutes downloading, uncompressing and reading Python Shen instructions.

2.  5 minutes installing Python - this was really easy.

3.  'python -m runshen' fails - probably because the python path is wrong.

4.  5-10 minutes tracking down where python is on my C drive.

5.  'C:\Python34\python -m runshen' entered.

6.  Catatonic silence for a few minutes; then ....

  Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:\Python34\lib\runpy.py", line 170, in _run_module_as_main

    "__main__", mod_spec)

  File "C:\Python34\lib\runpy.py", line 85, in _run_code

    exec(code, run_globals)

  File "C:\Users\User\Google Drive\Shen 19\Platforms\shen-py-master\runshen.py",

 line 1, in <module>

    import shen

  File "C:\Users\User\Google Drive\Shen 19\Platforms\shen-py-master\shen.py", li

ne 57, in <module>

    import cPickle as pickle

ImportError: No module named 'cPickle'

Lost interest!

The state of all of these ports is that most people except the dedicated or really 

knowledgeable would give up ever trying to install and hence use these ports. 

Is there any chance that porters can remedy this situation, so that their ports become

more available to other interested parties? 

Willi

[Greg Spurrier]

If you have successfully installed Ruby 1.9.3 or later on your system--although I'd recommend 2.2.x for best performance--then installing ShenRuby through its RubyGems distribution and then starting the REPL should be as simple as:

    gem install shen-ruby

    srrepl

Greg

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[Greg Spurrier]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Willi Riha <will...@gmail.com> wrote:

The state of all of these ports is that most people except the dedicated or really 

knowledgeable would give up ever trying to install and hence use these ports. 

Is there any chance that porters can remedy this situation, so that their ports become

more available to other interested parties? 

 

To be fair, someone attempting to use the CL ports face a similar challenge under Mac OS X or Linux:

1. Download the Shen sources, ZIP file, which is huge because of the Windows executables.

2. Install SBCL or CLisp

3. Figure out how to build Shen for the platform

I think it is fair to say that at this point each of the ports, including CL on non-Windows, assumes that the person installing the port has a working knowledge of the platform and its traditional means of building software from its sources or installing via its traditional distribution mechanism.

Is this ideal? No, and hopefully this can be improved on in the future. However, to use Shen for non-trivial applications requires reliance on the host platform for services not supported by Shen, so serious use will require a level of familiarity with one of the host platforms anyway.

For those who do not have a preferred platform, or simply want to get a taste of the language, I think a hosted version of the JavaScript port would be a very good thing to have available.

Greg

[Raoul Duke]

It *is* a lot of work to get these things working across the board. So
you can't expect too much. I mean, even commercial entities which
supposedly can support this kind of thing tend to either (a) not do it
and e.g. only support Windows, or (b) suck at it.

Still, even though I grok that it is hard, I find it to be a sad
indictment of our computer state-of-the-art / industry. It shouldn't
be that hard. We should want it enough to have done whatever it takes
to not have it be that hard. (In a commercial setting that argument
gets torpedoed by the fact that you have to run on whatever the
consumers want, and apparently they want e.g. iOS & Android which are
different enough to make it so nobody has really solved this problem,
despite lots of time and money and marketing being thrown at claiming
we have solved it.)

As I general rule, I have experienced this kind of thing with just
about anything and everything out there on the internet. I've been
checking out languages & game & graphics engines for a while and they
all, frankly, suck one way or another. It is odd to me that any of
them have any traction at all, they are so bad from my perspective.
Let alone, as a Yorkshireman might say, once you get it installed, the
actual product is kinda underdocumented crap. It is to sigh.

Boiling it down, for the open source stuff at least, I think there are
basically 2 reasons:

(1) The people working on it do not use your configuration, so they
don't know/care about it being bad there. So when I'm on Linux, and
e.g Marmalade says their IDE only works on Win & OSX as a very simple
example.

(2) There are people on the project using a setup similar to yours,
BUT they are technology apologists / clueless nerds who do not notice
anything is wrong / hard / annoying / confusing / underdocumented /
broken / silly / could be better. As an example, my experience with
Haxe is in that vein.

In other words, there's nobody who has the motivation & ability to see
& fix the problems. A general claim is that since it is open source,
you can contribute a fix. Ha ha ha ha ha that so utterly misses the
entire gestalt of the problem it makes me simultaneously livid beyond
imagining, and laughing my guts up.

[Greg Spurrier]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Willi Riha <will...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wanted to try Shen under some other platforms apart from Common Lisp and here is a log of my attempts.

Ruby Shen

1.  5 minutes downloading, uncompressing and reading Ruby Shen instructions

2.  3 minutes waiting for Ruby site to register.

3.  3 minutes downloading Ruby - tar.gz file requires me to install Winzip which I do not have.

Lost interest!

If you're still up for trying to install Ruby, have a look at RubyInstaller: http://rubyinstaller.org/. I do not have access to a Windows system right now, but, the last time I tried it, I was successful in using it to run ShenRuby.

Greg

[Mark Tarver]

Really it is a question of money;  As I've said ad nauseam - the Achilles heel of the entire OS movement.  This is free stuff and people expect it to be free and you get what you pay for.   Shen is no different.   And my answer now to questions - and the answer given by many OS people is 'figure it out'.  It's a non-answer of course because OS never really faced the problems honestly.  It was supposed that if there was a requirement for something easier, people would pay.  But people prefer to complain and press the developer and hope that something will happen.  And if it doesn't happen, they just cobble something together rather than pay.

As far as I'm concerned,  as a developer I don't yield to pressure any more - not in any significant way;  I won't give untold hours of time that I used to give.  I'll fix bugs in the kernel but I'm doing other things outside Shen that will hopefully bring money.

Willi is not wrong though.  He is right.  Kudos to him for at least trying to run these ports.  Greg is not wrong either.  You just cannot have a system where software usability and quality depends on unending goodwill and free time from the same few people.    I prefer not to be part of this situation because frankly I have no solution to it.

Back in 2011 we had self-extracting self-installing multi-OS installations courtesy of Vasil.   It became a full-time task to keep up with the new ports and new releases so we dropped this arrangement.   We really needed (need) a full-time properly paid person to coordinate all this work.  

Mark

[Mark Tarver]

I tried this I think just now - and had to restart Windows.

Mark

[fuzzy wozzy]

imagine for 60 seconds that money was not an issue because we were all well-to-do and have no need for another dollar ever,
how would the conversation go then?

..................................................

ok, your 60 seconds is up.
thank you.

[Raoul Duke]

Three underused words:
virtual machine image.

The main thing in my mind is to at least be able to prove to other
people that the thing you are "selling" actually works *at all*,
*somehwere*. Because I've been through enough crap cmake files only to
end up with something that wasn't worth it to have given up in
general.

If you can hand me something working, then you've at least shown me
that maybe it would actually be worth my time to e.g. get it working
on my own local OS of choice.

Of course the immense irony is that now you have to decide, oh for
which virtual machine will the image be? Virtual Box? VMWare? AWS?
etc.

(To which I would have to reply: most likely, realistically, AWS. Set
up an image and give instructions about how to run it in the "free"
tier.)

[Mark Tarver]

Yes; but that is a 60 second fantasy.

Mark

--

[Mark Tarver]

Your use of scare quotes in "selling" is apposite; we're not selling this work.  Hence nobody has to prove anything.   Personally I've outgrown the desire to prove things to people and nowdays I just concentrate on enjoying myself.  This is one of the bonuses of age.

Anyhow as said, probably the best course is to have JS running in the home page.

Mark

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[Mark Tarver]

I do have a grant application in; which if fulfilled would impact this situation significantly.

Mark

[Greg Spurrier]

On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 10:11 PM, Raoul Duke <rao...@gmail.com> wrote:

Three underused words:
virtual machine image. 

  

If you can hand me something working, then you've at least shown me

that maybe it would actually be worth my time to e.g. get it working
on my own local OS of choice.

Hi Raoul,

This is an excellent suggestion. I suspect that Docker might be the right solution for this since it is lighter weight than a full-blown VM installation, at least on Linux (you still need a Virtualbox VM for running on Windows and OS X, but they have boot2docker to handle that for you; seehttps://docs.docker.com/installation/windows/).

I've not yet used Docker very much, but I believe Michael Bradley offered to create Docker images for to aid in benchmarking. Michael, would you be willing to help get this set up and get Docker images for each of the certified ports up on Docker Hub. Or, at least get one working so that others can follow your lead?

Thanks,

Greg

[Raoul Duke]

i. hate. docker.

$0.02.

[Greg Spurrier]

Oh, really? Why? I have little experience with it, but several people I respect very much are quite fond of it.

Greg

> On Apr 27, 2015, at 1:12 PM, Raoul Duke <rao...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> i. hate. docker.
>
> $0.02.

>
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[Raoul Duke]

Several reasons. It is fundamentally insecure; It is a hack; It is
linux-only, really; The docs, while they look good, failed to really
explain very important concepts that I had to learn the hard way,
instead. Overall the UX / UI is not good; It depresses me that our
industry is so utterly intellectually bankrupt that docker seems like
mana to people. But that's just me.

[Raoul Duke]

Having said that, I *do* want *good* containers to exist.

e.g. https://sandstorm.io

[Mark Tarver]

I agree;  it would be good if people could download OS/X/Linux executables for Shen/SBCL; at least one platform would be easy to use.

If anybody wants to make such installations public,  I'll put up the links on the download page.

Mark

[Raoul Duke]

> at least one platform would be easy to use.

actually I'd really expect that Ruby Gems would be the most likely to Just Work.

[Greg Spurrier]

I can help with this. How do you feel about making the Shen Sources download be just sources again and then having three downloads of Shen/SBCL--Windows, OS X, and Linux--that contain only the executable plus any applicable supporting documentation?

Greg

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[Mark Tarver]

I've no objection to that.

Mark

[Greg Spurrier]

Ok. If you'll please make a download package for Shen/SBCL on Windows, I'll use it as a template for Linux first and then OS X later. Hopefully an image I build on Arch Linux will run on other Linux distributions. 

Greg

[Mark Tarver]

the instructions for Windows are in the SBCL directory - README.txt

Mark

[Greg Spurrier]

I was thinking more along the lines of a Zip file with a folder containing just the SBCL executable, the license, and a README pointing to the documentation on the Shen website. That way it's download, unzip, and go, without having to be concerned with the files that go into building the image or finding the executable under the Platforms directory.

Greg

[Greg Spurrier]

By SBCL executable, I mean Shen.exe.

Greg

[Mark Tarver]

The sources are now available w.o. any executables;  the CL download is unchanged.

Mark

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