(forwarding to guile-user because I forgot to reply-all) > Is using Guile, or a similar Scheme implementation, to re-implement > make or meson realistic?
Andy- I did actually try to do a make in Guile once. As it turns out, _make_ as a language is rather harder than it looks, especially if you start trying to add in GNU extensions or BSD extensions to POSIX make. The language is a bit of a muddle: parsing any token depends on neighboring tokens in a non-trivial way. Reimplementing GNU make might require transliterating a C make into scheme, rather than starting with a formal grammar and filling in from there. However, it should be possible to do a strict POSIX make relatively easily. POSIX make largely relies on the shell for its expressive power. Starting from a strict POSIX make and expanding upwards from there is a reasonable strategy. See pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/make.html for what POSIX make does and does not do. While I never finished writing a make, I did make a build tool in Guile inspired by make. But it is mostly a toy, and not actively maintained. github.com/spk121/potato-make Regards, Mike Gran