Comments on: R3 now on Linux and OSX

We reached a significant milestone today with the first alpha release of R3 for Linux and Mac OSX.

Yes, we still have a lot more work to do to get all of the standard devices (what we call the separate modular components in the new system) working, but the good news is that such development work can now be done by others who have greater expertise in those areas, and it can be done in parallel with the remaining R3 development and testing.

A significant part of this milestone was structural. We tend to forget how much work goes into these early days of setting up directories and scripts to make the system build as seamlessly as possible. Our goal is that even a first-year computer science student should be able to enhance or customize the R3 environment or extend on the wide range of device components.

Indeed, this is the start of a much bigger test of REBOL... allowing contributions to what will be 75% or more of the code base.

Of course, not to discourage anyone, but we're going to be careful and choosy about what becomes part of R3. We've got our standards. We still value small, fast, and smart. REBOL is about getting great advantage and leverage from a well-designed tool, not about becoming yet another bloated and hard-to-manage computer language.

But, now that's been said, if you have the expertise and knowledge to contribute to the project, and you really enjoy fine-tuned engines, please do not hesitate to contact Gabriele or myself.

10 Comments

Comments:

Goldevil 12-Sep-2007 4:06:12	Great news. Multi-platform is essential for me. There are many open source licences. What kind of licence are "compatible" with R3 (if I want to integrate a existing library to extends R3) : BSD, LGPL,... ? Somebody noticed that Antigrain 2.5 will be under GPL and no more a under modified BSD licence ?
Luis 12-Sep-2007 5:41	Will R3 for these platforms, assuming the SDK version, have easy creation of executables? I've been after a 'good' (as in up-to-date with the Windows version) of Rebol for OS X for ages now. I hope this news will bring all the platforms in line with each other. Cheers, Luis.
Norman 12-Sep-2007 8:17:29	>>fine-tuned engines It would help a little if we would know what "engine help" is needed.. Hope you can spare a paragraph ;-) btw..Good news, keep it coming ;-)
Robert Shiplett 13-Sep-2007 9:50:14	something like Liquid Rebol for dataflow gives us a major feature ( found in Oz, for example ). Facilitating Rebol as a language for workflow would mean offering a form of unification for backtracking through rules - or no? Is OZ suffering from bloat or low standards? Or just having minimal Constraint Handling Rules. Why should constraint resolution not be a central feature of Rebol ? Did Rebol ever have a core team member advocating at least forward-chaining for 'production system' of rules? What criteria arbitrate between core feature and nice-to-have extension? A missing core feature can preclude Rebol being a language of choice for workflow ( I hear that MERCURY is now running on Erlang on a workflow project ) Yes, I know, Mercury and OZ have no commercial traction. But is that due to either bloat or low standards?
Greg 13-Sep-2007 16:13:11	I guess everybody can't wait!
Kaj 13-Sep-2007 16:39:14	Robert, REBOL is fairly different from other functional languages. As with other wished features, you can define your own REBOL dialect for workflow and write an evaluator for it.
-pekr- 13-Sep-2007 18:56:54	IIRC someone did workflow engine in the past, well, FSM kind of one. Was it Gabriele? Can't remember right now. Other than that, I think that REBOL is cool candidate for the case, when you need to "express yourself freely", so yes, I can imagine WFL system written in REBOL, definitely ...
maxim olivier-adlhoch 28-Sep-2007 11:58:10	Robert, there is a fully production ready dataflow engine (with many advanced functions like lazy computing, etc) written in REBOL. I now use it in all of my largish apps. strangely, it is called liquid, which is stated in your post. I wonder if you already knew about it or not. you can get a version of the lib on rebol.org Docs are here: http://www.pointillistic.com/open-REBOL/moa/steel/liquid/index.html and during the fall, I will resume the programming of Elixir (almost alpha ready), which is a dataflow driven graphical work environment.
Luis 1-Oct-2007 6:35:32	By 'graphical work environment' do you mean like 'Prograph'? If so, please elaborate some more! Cheers, Luis.
Luis 1-Oct-2007 10:03:26	Ooops, I shouldv'e looked closer at the site... Cheers, Luis.

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