Bigloo for Windows

This is the official page for the native Windows distribution of Bigloo .

Bigloo is a Scheme system that includes an optimizing compiler generating C code, Java classes and .NET CIL files as well as an interpreter. Bigloo is the tool of choice for the construction of autonomous applications in Scheme. Bigloo is mostly conformant to the Revised⁵ Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme with many extensions. See the official Bigloo web site for more information.

This alternative distribution of Bigloo is ready to be used and packaged in a standard Windows Installer (see requirements below). In particular, applications generated for the C backend do not depend on the Cygwin C runtime as does the regular Bigloo distribution. Bigloo sources are not included in the Windows version but they can be downloaded here.

As for the regular distribution of Bigloo, this program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. More precisely:

• The compiler and the tools are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
• The Bigloo run-time system and the libraries are distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License.

The Posix Thread abstraction layer used by the Windows distribution is provided by the pthreads-win32 library , which is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Unless personal, please post your questions/comments/suggestions on the Bigloo mailing-list . Yeah, donations can be directly sent to me.

The resources of this project are hosted by .

• In order to use the C backend:
  • Compilation: C/C++ compiler such as
    • Microsoft Visual C++ .
    • The free Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 .
      Note that you will need msvcrt.lib, from instance from the MS .NET Framework SDK .
  • Execution: no requirement.
• In order to use the JVM backend:
  • Compilation: no requirement.
  • Execution: a JRE.
• In order to use the .NET backend:
  • Compilation: Portable.NET tools (pnet + pnetlib) version 0.6.0 or greater.
  • Execution: any CLR implementation such as
    • Portable.NET version 0.6.0 or greater.
    • Mono version 0.30 or greater.
    • The Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.0 or greater.
• In order to use The Bee, the [X]Emacs Integrated Development Environment for Bigloo:
  • Either Emacs or XEmacs .

Like the regular distribution of Bigloo, the native Windows distribution includes:

• The Bigloo compiler and interpreter.
• BDE (Bigloo Development Environment) tools: bglafile, bgldepend, bgljas, bgljfile, bglmake, bglmco, bglpp, bglprof, bgltags.
• The C to Bigloo translator: cigloo.
• The tool for converting Portable.NET binaries to MS compatible ones: bglpnet2ms.
• The Bee, the [X]Emacs Integrated Development Environment.
• Bigloo's and R5RS manual.
• Example programs.
• The Bigloo recette
• A?ditionnal libraries with their recettes: fthread, pthread.
• ...

Unlike the regular distribution of Bigloo, the native Windows distribution does not yet include the following additional libraries: calendar, mail, multimedia, sqllite, srfi-1, ssl, web.

Is the Windows Distribution of Bigloo based on the same code than the regular one?

Completely.
All changes or corrections that were required in order to compile Bigloo as a "native" binary (i.e. not requiring some additional Unix abstraction layer systems like Cygwin or MinGW) are fully integrated into the regular Bigloo codebase.
Well... Er... Besides corrections that came too late...

Why is the Windows Distribution of Bigloo on a separate site?

Although I try to stay in sync with official Bigloo releases, so that all corrections that were required in order to compile Bigloo under Windows get integrated, the Windows Distribution has quite a life of its own. First, I may have to release several build for the same version, mostly in order to correct installer bugs. Then, other builds may be released with additional features. Finally, having a separate site requires less synchronization with Manuel, which fits the way the Windows distribution of Bigloo is developped and maintained.

These files are not password protected. If you ever get asked to log in in order to download these files and happen to run a download manager, well... I guess you see what you oughta do...

• 2006/11/27 - Bigloo 2.8c (build 1) Installer (11.2Mb)
  • Changes from 2.7a build 1:
    • Code synchronization with Bigloo 2.8c final
• 2005/12/17 - Bigloo 2.7a (build 1) Installer (10.5Mb)
  • Changes from 2.6e build 2:
    • Code synchronization with Bigloo 2.7a final
    • (os-tmp) (and other functions) now correctly expands environment variables read from the Registry.
    • Posix thread abstraction layer is now provided by pthreads-win32.
    • Installer: The Bee is now installable and can be automatically registered into your .emacs file.
    • Uninstaller: .NET runtime DLLs are now removed from the GAC
• 2004/11/01 - Bigloo 2.6e (build 2) Installer (9.08Mb)
  • Changes from 2.6e build 1:
    • All included programs now support w?dlcards (* and ?) on command-lines
    • Start menu shortcuts do not trigger the installer any longer
    • Installer: now asks for the installation directory before asking for the final confirmation
  • Known issues:
    • The C recette fails on the read module. However, the compiler seems to run just fine...
    • Uninstaller: .NET runtime DLLs are not removed from the GAC
• 2004/10/26 - Bigloo 2.6e (build 1) Installer (9.08Mb)
  • Changes from 2.6c build 1:
    • Code synchronization with Bigloo 2.6e final
    • pnet2ms: corrected a bug when a referenced assembly could not be found in the GAC
    • pnet2ms: verbose options are now -v, -v2 and -v3
    • Installer: now outputs an error message when trying to register the .NET runtime DLLs and gacutil.exe cannot be found
    • Uninstaller: .NET runtime DLLs are now removed
• 2004/03/24 - Bigloo 2.6c (build 1) Installer (8.97Mb)
  • Changes from 2.6b build 3:
    • Code synchronization with Bigloo 2.6c final
• 2004/01/16 - Bigloo 2.6b (build 1) Installer (8.75Mb)
  • Changes from 2.6a build 3:
    • Code synchronization with Bigloo 2.6b final
    • Miscellaneous improvements/corrections specific to the native Windows version
• 2003/07/17 - Bigloo 2.6a (build 3) Installer (8.75Mb)
  • Changes from build 2:
    • Corrected bug in installer that could reset the PATH environment variable
    • Regular binaries (.exe) do not export symbols any more (so that .lib and .exp files won't be created by the linker)
• 2003/07/15 - Bigloo 2.6a (build 2) Installer
  • Changes from build 1:
    • Code synchronization with Bigloo 2.6a final
    • Corrected missing exports in runtime DLLs
    • Ported dynamic-load
    • DLLs do not have to define bigloo_abort anymore
    • Added jigloo
• 2003/06/30 - Bigloo 2.6a (build 1) Installer ?
  • First version of the Bigloo Win32 Installer

This native Windows version of Bigloo was compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.

If you are willing to compile Bigloo under Visual Studio, you just have to:

1. Download and extract somewhere:
   • 2006/11/27 - Sources and Visual Studio files used to build Bigloo 2.8c (build 1) (20.1Mb)
   • 2005/11/17 - Sources and Visual Studio files used to build Bigloo 2.7a (build 1) (18.4Mb)
2. Launch the Visual Studio solution file: VisualStudio/VisualStudio.sln. All sources C files are already generated.
   For more information, please read the README.WIN32.txt file.

Note that compiling the Visual Studio solution in release mode takes a loooong time (about 2 hours on a Pentium M 735 laptop running at 1.7GHz with 2Mb of L2 cache and 1Gb of RAM).

This native Windows version of Bigloo was compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.

If you are willing to compile Bigloo under Visual Studio (you need either a Cygwin or MinGW development platform), you just have to:

1. Get the regular Bigloo distribution from the official Bigloo web site and decompress the files to whatever directory.
2. Extract the files from the Visual Studio specific archive under a VisualStudio/ sub-directory:
   • 2004/10/26 - Visual Studio files used to build Bigloo 2.6e (build 1) (185Kb)
   • 2004/01/16 - Visual Studio files used to build Bigloo 2.6b (build 1) (180Kb)
3. Set the VS71DIR environment variable to the path where Visual Studio 2003 is installed.
4. Under Cygwin or MinGW, configure and boot Bigloo:
        ./configure  ;  make
5. Build the whole stuff:
        (cd VisualStudio && make)
   

Compiling the Visual Studio solution in release mode takes a loooong time (about 2 hours on a Pentium M 735 laptop running at 1.7GHz with 2Mb of L2 cache and 1Gb of RAM). You may prefer to launch the full Visual Studio environment in order to get progress feedback. In this case, just skip step 3 (do not set the VS71DIR environment variab?e) and once everything else above has been done, double-click on VisualStudio/VisualStudio.sln.