Subject: bug#15221: provide a mechanism to activate readline systemwide

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 10:01:23 -0400

---- "Arne Babenhauserheide (IMK)" <[email-masked]> wrote: 
> Hi,
> 
> Not having readline at the guile interpreter from the get-go in a GNU
> environment was a quite scarring experience for me, so it would be great
> to have a way to enable readline by default.
> 
> init.scm could provide that, but:
> 
> <wingo> it seems to search the load path for init.scm
> <wingo> before loading anything else
> <wingo> tricky though, apparently that happens even before loading boot-9
> 
> Ideally there should be either a compileflag or a systemwide config file
> to enable readline support in the whole system. If it is a compile-flag
> it might be useful to not make it default, because developers why
> develop proprietary applications could then by accident compile a
> program with activated readline support.
> 
> If such a flag existed, most GNU/Linux distributions could simply
> activate it for guile itself (as long as they do not ship unfree scripts
> using guile which depend on readline support — those scripts would
> violate the GPL, but they would not work at all without readline
> support, so this dependency should be pretty clear).

Sometimes readline gets in the way, for example, when using guile with emacs.

If it was enabled by default, then there also must be an option to disable it when not needed.

The main reason readline is not enabled by default (IIRC), is the license differences between readline and guile. (GPL and LGPL)

-Dale