Re: Repeated failures to build later versions of Chicken from binaries v5.3.0

Hey there!

On 2/27/26 17:34, brainchild--- via Chicken-users wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I wish to experiment with the developmental pre-releases of Chicken 6,
> which seems to be generally possible only by building from source,
> which in turn requires some adequate working binary copy of Chicken.

This is not entirely true, unless you're building directly from a 
checked-out git repository. The builds on:

     - https://code.call-cc.org/releases/
     - https://code.call-cc.org/dev-snapshots/

Do not require bootstrapping, as these releases can be purely built with 
a GNU Make and a compatible C compiler.

> 
> I am using a system with Mint 22.2, which is based on Ubuntu Noble. I
> have installed the distribution package for Chicken, from Ubuntu
> repositories, which is version 5.3.0. This version is most recent I
> have so far been able to operate on my system.
> 
> For building more recent versions, I have cloned the development Git
> repository, and attempted building from a variety of tags, including
> `6.0.0pre3`, `6.0.0pre1`, `6.0.0-bootstrap`, and `5.4.0`. In all such
> cases, the build fails immediately, with generally quite similar
> messages.

It is a bit of a distraction, but for this purpose locally I am using 
"basket," a tool I developed for installing and managing CHICKEN Scheme 
installations and virtual environments. You might find more success with 
that, for example:

     basket toolchain install -d 5.4.0 6.0.0pre3

You can find more information in the docs 
<https://thatgeoguy.gitlab.io/basket/introduction.html>.

To expand on this, I have successfully built chicken-core before using 
basket, but it's a bit involved since I had to first install a 
compatible version of CHICKEN to bootstrap. I am somewhat remembering 
off of the top of my head but:

     basket toolchain install -d 6.0.0pre3
     cd $HOME/Code/chicken-core/
     basket run -M ~/.config/basket/csenv.toml bash
     export PLATFORM=linux
     export PREFIX="$(systemd-path user-shared)/6.0.0-git"
     export CHICKEN=$(which chicken)
     ./configure
     make

Note that you will need `./configure` for CHICKEN 6, but not for 5.

Besides that, I don't know that I know nearly enough to get you going, 
but I hope basket can be useful or this can help put you in the right 
direction.

Cheers,
-- 
Jeremy Steward