World: r4wp

I have completed the set of fixes for various path issues for Red. 
They are available from the `fix-issue-277` branch and they should 
cover the following issues:

#251 (Red doesn't find source in working directory)
#252 (#system cannot find #include)

#277 (Include system doesn't handle well files with same name in 
different directories)

#366 (Compilation of code outside of the Red/ path fails under Windows)
#381 (#system-global doesn't detect equal #include paths)


Please let me know if there are remaining path issues to fix before 
merging this branch with master.

Just want to briefly describe that in my expectation a C-level language 
means you can do things like you would when using C. So it is not 
that you would have to call functions/programs/libraries with C programs 
to do those things. So for speed issues or fast prototyping purposes 
or to do things not yet possible in another way you use the bindings. 
In my case I wanted to try to program a relative simple algorithm 
of which I have an example in C and I want to do that using Red or 
Red/System. I can accept it is too early at this stage.. at least 
for me but this kind of thing is what others will be doing in the 
near future and they discover you can do literally anything using 
Red and Red/System, as long as you make a C program to do it and 
call that. That is a bit of a black and white view, but that is how 
I see it.

Thanks, Doc. That's a major devil driven out of the details

The hardest part was to tell apart REBOL path issues from Red and 
Red/System own path issues.

They look too much alike ;-)

Arnold: I can only encourage you to do so, implementing more algorithms 
in Red/System is the best way to help it grow and improve it.

Arnold, Red/System has been ready for writing code for at least a 
year. Red is only getting to that stage now, so that's why I have 
been working in Red/System. My 6502 emulator is a major self-contained 
work in Red/System, but there's also the issue of communicating with 
the outside world. Unless you write your own operating system, the 
way to do that is by binding to the existing operating system

#252 is finally fixed

More great progress Doc. Thanks for the update.

I've tested a number of complex scenarios, including one I hadn't 
reported yet, and they work now

We are still struggling to make #366 pass in all use-cases (Windows/Linux/OSX, 
run from console vs from shell,...): https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/issues/366

Fortunately, I can skip the Windows discussion :-)

Actually, my last issue in on non-Windows systems, with the run from 
"console vs shell". Hard to fix one without breaking the other...

With the help of Andreas and Peter, we've fixed the last remaining 
non-passing cases. I will merge the fixes in the master branch tonight, 
in the meantime, if you notice any regression or issue with paths 
handling, please report them here before the merge.

It's great to hear you're making continuted progress!

Thanks Nick.

Just donated 50 EUR so that Red project does not feel bad by my move 
to donate also to R3/Android/GUI :-)

Thanks Petr! :-)

I've done a full build run with the path fixes, without regressions

Merged branch `fix-issue-277`. Thanks to all contributors and testers 
for helping clean up those issues.

http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r?view=0527#comments


Fork: "I am porting Red to R3--and while I won't claim I'm "almost 
done", I will say I've made significant progress. Red/System now 
builds a working hello.reds under both R3 and R2."


Great! Like Nick says, hard to keep track of everything happening 
these days. :-)

surprised by Fork even looking into Red, he seemed to be interested 
mainly in R3 itself ...

Well, in fact I don't understand, what he actually did. What I would 
expect is someone writing R3 in R/S, so that it would got all backends 
R/S supports?

It sounds like he ported the Red compiler, which currently runs on 
R2, AFAIK?

He ported the Red/System compiler from R2 to R3 and he seems to be 
working to port Red compiler from R2 to R3 too.

Kaj should be pleased :-)

pity he did not start porting Red/System into Red, that would speed-up 
removal of dependency on Rebol :-)

Why don't we wait until more of Red exists? Or is Red feature-complete 
for core language features that would be used to write a compiler? 
If not, and you ported the Red compiler to the Red subset you have 
now, it would be a lot of work to do. And you'd want to rewrite it 
when you actually implemented the Red features you would want to 
eventually use in the compiler. Removing the dependency on Rebol 
should be done eventually, but it isn't as high a priority as implementing 
Red, right?

Doc's plan is to implement the whole stack using Red rather sonner 
than later.

AFAIU, the priority has always been to implement as much of Red as 
is needed for bootstrapping.

Cool. We can wait to do the bootstrapping until that is done.

Does #192 apply to SWITCH and CASE, too?

Very possible, it should affect every Red/System statement used in 
expressions. I don't think this is fixable before Red/System v2.

I haven't been of much help to you yet. I even may have been "too 
loud" sometimes polluting this discussion with my preferences. What 
I want to say now, though, is that I consider it good to have more 
dialects of Rebol instead of having just a totally compatible copy, 
so, please, take that as an encouragement and appraisal of your work.

Thank you for your kind words Ladislav.

Doc, would you update this page of yours http://www.red-lang.org/p/documentation.html


to indicate that Red chat is occuring at http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/291/rebol-and-red

The Rde presentation shows the use of the binary Red. In it shows 
how to compile to get a cgi and a dynamic library. Are these also 
implemented in the current compile scripts? In that case that holds 
a good argument to update the Redcompiler.r script. It needs some 
work anyhow I noticed, it is rather location dependent atm.

Rde=Red

Arnold: no, it's not implemented yet, it's a target.

GrahamC: I will add to the Red web site only links to strictly Red-related 
communication channels. OTOH, I can tweet this link.

I'd like to know if it would be possible to use Red/System to implement 
a program to capture frames from a web cam on a Raspberry Pi?  Or 
would this be better performed in another language?

I know that François Jouen is already using Red/System to make image 
capturing from multiple cameras on OS X. Also as a rule of thumb, 
everything that is doable in C can be also achieved in Red/System.

That it is a target I can see now I have viewed the presentation 
a second time. Do you have a faint idea of a timeline when various 
stages of Red could become part of the real world? So version 4 in 
april and the first binary Red in 2015?

Binary Red could be added in a few weeks (except for the interpreter 
with console which would need an additiion binary), we just need 
to encap all Red codebase files in one executable.

For a complete single binary, we need Red to be self-hosted, so probably 
not before end of 2013.

additiion
 = additional

The interpreter console is already a binary

Thanks for the info.  I have a 512MB RasPi and a 16GB SD card on 
my desk right now.  I'm going to give it a shot soon.

Can I pass function pointer as an argument to another function in 
Red/System?

Yes