masak
commented
2 years ago An intriguing suggestion.
Alma is on hiatus right now as I work on that other thing, and packaging up Alma in order to expose it to a place like TIO, while exhilarating on the conceptual plane, does not currently fit into my tuit supply chain.
I can't help but mention that my first reaction was "yeah, but what I really would like is...", and then this exciting but completely unrealistic idea of putting the world on hold for two weeks while I spend all my waking time re-implementing Alma in TypeScript, with a CPS-based runtime (unlike the current one) and a fully bootstrapped parser/Q system (unlike the current one).
Out of respect, I will keep this issue open. It remains a good idea.
One can try Raku online by just clicking a link.
My suggestion is to make the same be true for alma.
The point of doing so would be to bring in folk interested in developing AST macro systems. I think I would have a decent shot at doing that if I could post an online evaluator link when appropriate in discussions about (ast) macros in reddit.com/r/programminglanguages.
(I recognize I could just link to this repo instead, and I've done that a couple times over the last few years, but that's really not the same.)
To get alma added to a suitable online evaluator boils down to suitably packaging alma so the folk running the online evaluator can relatively easily install it.
I'm not volunteering to package alma. But I'm guessing it wouldn't be difficult for someone who knew how to do such a thing, and that a volunteer to do it could be found among Rakoons.
I know of a handful of evaluators that support Raku. I am very confident that, among those, tio is the right one to focus on for alma. (I will explain why I think that in a follow up comment if you wish.)
I know that tio.run are more than willing to add any PL, whether "practical" or "recreational" (they put each PL in one or other category; alma would be classified as "recreational"), provided that the PL has a suitable package so they can install it with minimal fuss.
By "suitable", I mean a package that has been accepted into a public package collection (iirc TIO will accept a https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages package).
For the precise details, speak to the tio folk. To do that, click the first link above, click the word TIO at the top left, and follow their instructions.
(I would rather you do that if you decide you're interested rather than me; there's only a couple folk behind TIO and getting a ping from you and/or whoever packages alma makes much more sense than it being me.)