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* Chickadee: (chickadee).     Game programming toolkit for Guile.

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<span id="Live-Coding"></span><div class="header">
<p>
Next: <a href="API-Reference.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">API Reference</a>, Previous: <a href="Command-Line-Interface.html" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Command Line Interface</a>, Up: <a href="index.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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<hr />
<span id="Live-Coding-1"></span><h2 class="chapter">4 Live Coding</h2>

<p>One of the biggest appeals of any Lisp dialect is the ability to use
the &ldquo;read-eval-print loop&rdquo; (REPL for short) to build programs
iteratively and interactively while the program is running.  However,
programs that run in an event loop and respond to user input (such as
a game using the Chickadee library!) require special care for this
workflow to be pleasant.
</p>
<p>If you are using the <code>chickadee play</code> command to run your
game, then the <code>--repl</code> or <code>--repl-server</code> arguments are all
you need to get a live coding environment running.
</p>
<p>If, however, you are using <code>run-game</code> to start the game loop then
it&rsquo;s still fairly easy to hook up a special kind of REPL by yourself.
</p>
<p>First, create a cooperative REPL server (It&rsquo;s important to use Guile&rsquo;s
cooperative REPL server instead of the standard REPL server in
<code>(system repl server)</code> to avoid thread synchronization issues).
Then, in the game loop&rsquo;s update procedure, call
<code>poll-coop-repl-server</code> and pass the REPL object.  Here is a
template to follow:
</p>
<div class="lisp">
<pre class="lisp"><span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">use-modules</span> <span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">chickadee</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>
             <span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">system</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">repl</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">coop-server</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>

<span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-special">define</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">repl</span> <span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">spawn-coop-repl-server</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>

<span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-special">define</span> <span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">update</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">dt</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>
  <span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">poll-coop-repl-server</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">repl</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>
  <span class="syntax-symbol">...</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>

<span class="syntax-open">(</span><span class="syntax-symbol">run-game</span> <span class="syntax-keyword">#:update</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">update</span> <span class="syntax-symbol">...</span><span class="syntax-close">)</span>
</pre></div>

<p>To use the REPL, connect to it via port 37146.  Telnet will do the
trick, but using the <a href="https://www.nongnu.org/geiser/">Geiser</a>
extension for Emacs is by far the best way to develop at the REPL with
Guile.  Use <code>M-x connect-to-guile</code> to connect to the REPL server.
</p>



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