Announcing Basket (v0.1.1)

Hey everybody,

I wanted to announce the release of a new project I've been working on. 
Those of you who hang out in #chicken on IRC have already had a small 
glimpse of it, but I've finally cleaned up my CI and written 
documentation, so here we are!

Enter: Basket. Basket is a new tool for doing package and project 
management in CHICKEN Scheme. It achieves this by:

1. Managing user-local CHICKEN installations; AND
2. Providing a mechanism for virtual environments with CHICKEN that 
don't touch your installation

I built this because I have had a hell of a time with finding a 
satisfactory system that allows me to switch CHICKEN versions when 
developing various eggs (especially transducers and generalized-arrays), 
and I wanted something closer to <https://astral.sh/uv>. I plan to use 
this aggressively in the coming month(s) to get every egg I maintain in 
order for CHICKEN 6.

I suggest checking out the book / documentation here:

<https://thatgeoguy.gitlab.io/basket/introduction.html>

This is hosted on GitLab pages. You can find the repo at:

<https://gitlab.com/ThatGeoGuy/basket>

and releases at;

<https://gitlab.com/ThatGeoGuy/basket/-/releases>

# Current Issues

I've had good success with basket so far on unix systems. I've tried on 
x86 and aarch64, and even compiled it (along with having it install 
CHICKEN Scheme) for musl systems.

The main thing I'm trying to gauge right now is what platforms to 
support. I've given a basic list with this initial release, but I'm sure 
that will change over time:

- Linux
- Windows
- Illumos
- FreeBSD

I would support MacOS as well officially, but currently can't be arsed 
to set it up in CI for pre-built binaries. Dealing with OSXCross on 
Linux CI runners is a kind of pain I don't really want to undertake 
right now, and I don't currently use MacOS enough to warrant spending on 
full MacOS runners (they're very expensive!).

I have full confidence in this working as intended on the various 
platforms above, but I do suspect Windows might have some issues. I want 
to try to investigate these and provide better Windows support in the 
future, because I know that dealing with installing anything on Windows 
is an uphill battle.

Anyways, do let me know your thoughts if you give it a try! I would love 
if more folks can help find any rough edges I may have left over.

Cheers,
-- 
Jeremy Steward