TeXmacs performance and compilation

#1

Dear Community and Developers,

I have recently configured WSL on my Windows machine. I currently run a Debian WSL host. I installed TeXmacs and it works really well in WSL with X forwarding to VcXsrv (a windows based X server) running on my host. I must say that TeXmacs feels very snappy, much snappier than on Windows on that machine.

On a parallel note, as a small project I tried compiling TeXmacs from source on my Debian machine. I read through some of the mailing list exchanges and understood that the version that has the new scheme interpreter (Guile 3) is in @darcy’s guile-3 branch. I am happy to say that I manged to compile it without issues (and I took some notes on the process e.g. a list of Debian packages I had to install).

I was thinking of trying to setup github actions to automate building TeXmacs.

As I mentioned, I also use TeXmacs on Windows, so if I can help testing, please reach out.

Thank you again for your work!

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#2

Here is the CI I made for the GNU TeXmacs fork (Mogan):

Because to automate building GNU TeXmacs, I have to build guile 1.8 first. It is a bit complicated to make it work. For now, I only make CI in the fork.

#3

I have found this post [DOC] Step by step guide to make a debian package for GNU Guile 1.8.8 - Community - GNU TeXmacs Forum about guile1.8.8 but unfortunately compiling it segfaults (I have the issue even if I try to simply compile rather than build the package). I asked a follow up question there.

#4

Good to hear, @guraltsev! Texmacs needs more people to test the latest changes before they are released.
At the moment development and testing happens in one main branch, which I believe is far from ideal.

I think it’s time we start thinking of a workflow for testing patches before they are to be considered for inclusion in the main branch. I believe this should involve CI with automated testing, peer review by at least two reviewers, and a period (a month?) of inclusion in a testing/alpha branch for testers to use.

This would all be much easier in a more flexible software forge than GNU Savannah. I am not a big fan of Github, though. Many free software projects seem to be moving to codeberg.org or source hut.

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#5

I am not a big fan of Github, though.

Me too.

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#6

For performance, you may try the S7 branch by @mgubi

My fork (Mogan) is based on the S7 branch.

Actually, the author of the guile-3 branch is also mgubi.

#7

I’ll definitely do that. My point was more about the discrepancy between windows and linux performance. I am not sure that the guile-3 branch works under windows.

#8

I took a look at codeberg and it seems nice. It is similar to github visually so that would make it generally accessible to people. There are also resources for implementing CI

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#9

I don’t think so. AFAIK, Guile 3 doesn’t compile at all on Windows.