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New user: some general Arc questions
5 points by mr_excellent 5878 days ago | 10 comments
After installing Arc and working through a small amount of the tutorial, I'm still left with some general questions that I'm hoping can be answered here:

1. Is there an Arc wiki up anywhere yet?

2. What is "Arc3F"? That is, this: <http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master>

3. What is Anarki? What is arc-f? I'm guessing "arc2" is the official Arc (though there's no readme with version info in the distribution).

4. Does pg accept many patches for Arc?

5. Any Emacs advice for arconauts? Is everyone using <http://zardoz.net/arc.el>?

6. Any tips on getting the regular commandline editing keys working in my Ubuntu Gnome terminal window?

Thanks.



7 points by almkglor 5878 days ago | link

1. Not as such, although the Anarki wiki exists: http://github.com/nex3/arc/wikis . It isn't very complete yet, however

2. Arc3F is the latest (and so far, only) version of Arc-F. Arc-F is a fork of Arc I created, featuring some neat stuff, particularly packages. The page you linked to is the Anarki repository, which contains a very modified version of Arc2.

3. When we say "Arc2" or "ArcN", we refer to the official PG release. Anarki is the community's repository of Arc, and the community version of Arc that is based on the latest ArcN. Arc-F is a more recent fork of Arc; it includes a full-fledged symbol-based package system and a partially rewritten standard library.

4. None at all. Anarki accepts all patches. Arc-F accepts all patches too, but Arc-F has very much larger differences to ArcN than Anarki.

5. None from me, I'm afraid; I'm a VIM guy ^^

6. Download rlwrap. You should be able to get it by:

  sudo apt-get rlwrap
If you have rlwrap installed and use the arc.sh launcher, or the arc-f/arc launcher script, the launcher script will automatically use rlwrap.

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1 point by mr_excellent 5878 days ago | link

Thanks for the reply, almkglor.

Why does the link near the top of the forum (subj: "Arc3F Released..." (http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8270)) link to the Anarki online repo, instead of some Arc3F repo?

BTW, how do I use the arc.sh launcher? I don't see that file anywhere in my arc2 distribution.

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2 points by almkglor 5878 days ago | link

> Why does the link near the top of the forum (subj: "Arc3F Released..." (http://arclanguage.org/item?id=8270)) link to the Anarki online repo, instead of some Arc3F repo?

Here's a succinct explanation: http://arclanguage.com/item?id=8390

Here's a longer one:

The Anarki repository was first set up early this year by nex3 on his own server. It was set up such that everyone can write to it - no credentials needed, just clone the repository and you can start pushing on the Anarki repository.

Some time after that he decided to move the repository onto github.com. Even on github.com, the Anarki repository is still fully open.

However, none of the rest of us can figure out how to make our own github-based repositories fully open (i.e. publicly writeable).

I'll probably move Arc-F into its own repository if and when I figure out how to make it fully open.

> how do I use the arc.sh launcher?

It's on the Anarki distribution. The Arc-F distribution is just "arc" without the .sh . ArcN does not have a launcher.

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2 points by mr_excellent 5878 days ago | link

Thanks for the background info, almkglor.

Odd about the github setup issue. Guess I don't quite understand. Seems like someone could just email nex3 or someone at github to get the correct config incantations...

Also, it's confusing that the Description of the project at github doesn't say "The community's extended version of Paul Graham's Brand New Lisp". Currently, it looks like that's where pg keeps the source.

Is nex3 still in the picture and responsive?

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2 points by nex3 5874 days ago | link

I'm sort of around-ish. I don't really do anything with Arc anymore, but I occasionally browse the forums (e.g. now). I'll certainly reply to any direct questions.

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2 points by almkglor 5878 days ago | link

AFAIK no, at least in the sense that he no longer hangs out here. However AFAIK no one has actually e-mailed him or anything^^

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1 point by eds 5876 days ago | link

> However, none of the rest of us can figure out how to make our own github-based repositories fully open (i.e. publicly writeable).

The easiest way to host a open source repository is probably http://repo.or.cz/, which allows setting up a "mob" user to allow wiki-style pushing like we currently have under Anarki. Obviously the same is possible in github, but I don't know how to set it up.

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2 points by eds 5876 days ago | link

> 5. Any Emacs advice for arconauts? Is everyone using http://zardoz.net/arc.el?

I use arc.el and inferior-arc.el from http://github.com/nex3/arc/tree/master/extras. These are probably the same as the ones you listed, I don't really know.

I also highly suggest Paredit from http://mumble.net/~campbell/emacs/paredit.el.

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2 points by stefano 5878 days ago | link

Welcome!

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1 point by mr_excellent 5878 days ago | link

Thanks, Stefano.

Funny thing. I made up my username here quickly and without much thought, but if I'm going to stick around, maybe I'll change it.

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