It wouldn’t completely solve the problem.

> IMO, string ports should use UTF-8 as their initial port encoding, since
> we know that UTF-8 can represent any Guile string.  This will allow
> portable use of string ports.

The change was submitted and briefly discussed at
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.devel/9822>.

I think the rationale was mostly backward compatibility (in 1.8 people
could mix Latin-1 textual and binary I/O), consistency with how other
ports behave, and the ability to change the default encoding of string
ports.

> I realize that this would change the existing behavior of programs that
> use binary I/O on string ports, but as things stand right now, portable
> SRFI-6 code is broken on Guile.
>
> What do you think?

In hindsight, UTF-8 does seem like a better default than the locale port
encoding (which is what %default-port-encoding is, by default), but it
does remain useful to specify a different encoding.

>>> What _is_ needed is a file coding declaration near the top of the source
>>> file, e.g. "coding: utf-8" (see "Character Encoding of Source Files" in
>>> the manual).
>>
>> Yes.  And you actually need both–i.e., the ‘coding’ cookie won’t
>> magically make string ports use that encoding.
>>
>>> I tried that and it still fails for me.
>>
>> What fails exactly?
>
> It fails ungracefully (goes into an infinite while trying to print the
> backtrace) without the %default-port-encoding setting.

Indeed, it’s stuck in a deadlock:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff75e1204 in __lll_lock_wait () from /nix/store/vxycd107wjbhcj720hzkw2px7s7kr724-glibc-2.12.2/lib/libpthread.so.0
#1  0x00007ffff75dc4d4 in _L_lock_999 () from /nix/store/vxycd107wjbhcj720hzkw2px7s7kr724-glibc-2.12.2/lib/libpthread.so.0
#2  0x00007ffff75dc2ea in pthread_mutex_lock () from /nix/store/vxycd107wjbhcj720hzkw2px7s7kr724-glibc-2.12.2/lib/libpthread.so.0
#3  0x00007ffff7b30499 in scm_dynwind_pthread_mutex_lock (mutex=0x7ffff7dd28c0) at threads.c:1962
#4  0x00007ffff7b2bb0e in scm_mkstrport (pos=0x2, str=0x4, modes=327680, caller=<value optimized out>) at strports.c:287
#5  0x00007ffff7aac20b in display_backtrace_body (a=0x7fffffffc1a0) at backtrace.c:487
#6  0x00007ffff7b46c7b in vm_regular_engine (vm=0x6f61f0, program=0x7f5d50, argv=0x6fa3b0, nargs=-1) at vm-i-system.c:895
#7  0x00007ffff7ac039e in scm_call_3 (proc=0x7f5d50, arg1=<value optimized out>, arg2=<value optimized out>, arg3=<value optimized out>) at eval.c:500
#8  0x00007ffff7b32504 in scm_internal_catch (tag=<value optimized out>, body=<value optimized out>, body_data=<value optimized out>, handler=<value optimized out>, handler_data=<value optimized out>) at throw.c:222
#9  0x00007ffff7aabbba in scm_display_backtrace_with_highlights (stack=<value optimized out>, port=<value optimized out>, first=<value optimized out>, depth=<value optimized out>, highlights=<value optimized out>)
    at backtrace.c:558
#10 0x00007ffff7ab725e in print_exception_and_backtrace (error_port=0x6f6170, tag=0x66d4c0, args=0x8e6ea0) at continuations.c:490
#11 pre_unwind_handler (error_port=0x6f6170, tag=0x66d4c0, args=0x8e6ea0) at continuations.c:534
#12 0x00007ffff7b46c7b in vm_regular_engine (vm=0x6f61f0, program=0x7f3ce0, argv=0x6fa300, nargs=-1) at vm-i-system.c:895
#13 0x00007ffff7b4846e in scm_call_with_vm (vm=0x6f61f0, proc=0x7f3ce0, args=<value optimized out>) at vm.c:878
#14 0x00007ffff7b296db in scm_to_stringn (str=0x8dba80, lenp=0x7fffffffc4e8, encoding=<value optimized out>, handler=SCM_FAILED_CONVERSION_ERROR) at strings.c:2102
#15 0x00007ffff7b2bb73 in scm_mkstrport (pos=0x2, str=0x8dba80, modes=196608, caller=<value optimized out>) at strports.c:312
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This could be fixed by calling ‘scm_new_port_table_entry’ after having
prepared the backing buffer, but the problem is that ‘pt->encoding’ is
needed before.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.