Can I use Racket to install packages for Chez Scheme for Racket?

[LiberalArtist]

@lewisl

I followed some instructions to build the Chez Scheme underneath Racket to get a Chez Scheme that runs natively on M1 processors and OSX. That worked and completed quickly, but it created a very non-standard build which much be run as make run-->the binary executable is hidden somewhere deep in the file system with no clue as to its location. Thus, there is no way to create a standard setup of Chez Scheme.

Hopefully my reply at How to make small executables? - #22 by LiberalArtist helps with the installation: tl;dr run make install to get a normal-shaped directory.

@lewisl

I am trying to install srfi packages/libraries for Chez using akku: this is another mess because akku can only be installed using Guile and there appears to be no binary distributable of Guile.

I wasn't previously aware of akku; it seems interesting. Nix packages chez-srfi, which includes SRFI 43. In Guix, we use Racket's Chez Scheme on architectures like Aarch64 that aren't supported by upstream Chez (but Guix only supports the Linux and Hurd kernels). I know Nix has also packaged Racket's Chez for the sake of Idris 2: I'm not 100% sure if they use it on Aarch64 more generally as we do, but it would basically be a one-line change if they don't already. It looks like Nix also packages Akku.

@lewisl

Just use Racket.

This is definitely my bottom-line recommendation!