Resurrecting old PLT-Scheme project (pre-1999)

Question

I'm trying to resurrect an old (1999 or earlier) project written in Scheme (PLT-Scheme, using the mzscheme interpreter (?) commandline tool). To make the matters worse, I don't know Scheme, or Lisp (in fact, I want to learn, but that's another story).

I have the source code of the project at:

github.com/akavel/sherman

Now, when running the code, it bails out with an error message like below:

Sherman runtime version 0.5
Hosted on MzScheme version 52, Copyright (c) 1995-98 PLT (Matthew Flatt)
reference to undefined identifier: list->block

(I've tried PLT-Scheme versions 52, 53, 103, 103p1. Earlier versions don't allow mzscheme -L option, which is referenced in the sherman.bat script used in the project. Later versions also have some more serious problems with the code or options.)

The difficulty is, that from what I see, list->block actually is defined - see: collects/sherman/BLOCK.SS line 48. So, what is wrong?

To run the code, I perform the following steps:

1. Download PLT-Scheme v. 103p1 (from the old versions download page - first closing the "PLT Scheme is now Racket" banner) - for Windows, use: mz-103p1-bin-i386-win32.zip.
2. Unzip (e.g. to directory c:\PLT).
3. Copy c:\sherman\collects\sherman directory with contents to: c:\PLT\collects\sherman (where c:\sherman contains the contents of the github repository).
4. Run cmd.exe, then cd c:\sherman.
5. set PATH=c:\PLT;%PATH%
6. sherman.bat run trivial.s
   • this command is in fact, from what I understand, equivalent to:

(require-library "runtime.ss" "sherman")
(parameterize ((current-namespace sherman-namespace)) (load "trivial.s"))
(current-namespace sherman-namespace)

• After that, I get the error as described above (MzScheme version would be reported as 103p1 or whatever).

Could you help me solve the problem?

EDIT 2: SOLVED!

To whom it may concern, I've added a fully fledged "How to use this project" instruction on the project page, detailing the solution to the problem thanks to soegaard's help.

In short:

copy trivial.s trivial.rs
rem (the above is workaround for problems with 'r2s.exe < trivial.r > trivial.rs')
sherman.bat compile trivial.rs
sherman.bat run trivial.zo
rem (or: sherman.bat run trivial.ss)

Answer 1

Not an answer, but a few notes too big for a comment.

1. Sanity Check

The error message says list->block is undefined. Make sure that the code in block.ss is run, by inserting (display "block.ss is loaded!") in block.ss just to make sure, the code is run.

---

2. Random Thoughts

The file blocks.ss begins with:

(require-library "functios.ss")
(require-library "synrule.ss")
(require-library "stream.ss" "sherman")

The file "sherman/stream.ss" is in the repository, but where is "synrule.ss" and "functios.ss" ?

Ah... This code is old! Here is a description of how require-library worked. It lists functios.ss and synrule.ss as part of MzLib.

http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~scheme/doc/mzscheme/node158.htm

Let's check out how require-library worked:

When require-library is used to load a file, the library name and the resulting value(s) are recored in a table associated with the current namespace. If require-library is evaluated for a library that is already registered in the current namespace's load table, then the library is not loaded again; the result(s) recorded in the load table is returned, instead.

So when the code in block.ss is run, the names are stored in a namespace. If the current namespace is the wrong one, when the code in block.ss is evaluated, it would explain you error message of list->block being undefined.