Loko Scheme: Bare Metal Optimizing Scheme Compiler

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

dTal

165 points

15 comments

scheme.failTechstory

excitedpositive

Debate

20/100

SchemeCompilerBare MetalConcurrency

Key topics

Scheme

Compiler

Bare Metal

Concurrency

The Loko Scheme compiler is a bare metal optimizing Scheme compiler that has garnered interest and excitement among HN users, with discussions around its features, documentation, and potential applications.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Active discussion

First comment

Peak period

120-132h

Avg / period

7.5

Comment distribution15 data points

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Based on 15 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 7, 2025 at 3:41 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 12, 2025 at 8:31 AM EDT
5d after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
12 comments in 120-132h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Oct 13, 2025 at 2:38 AM EDT
3 months ago
Step 04

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Discussion (15 comments)

Showing 15 comments

pjmlp

3 months ago

1 reply

Nice achievement, building on the foregone dreams of Lisp powered workstations.

We need more efforts like these and less yet another UNIX clone in C.

jll29

3 months ago

1 reply

Agree. How would one use/access graphics and GUIs with overlapping windows from it?

pjmlp

3 months ago

Like this?

https://interlisp.org/

Or are you asking about this instead?

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_symbolicssGuidetoSymbo...

mark_l_watson

3 months ago

1 reply

I also like that it runs on bare metal. I wonder is it builds and runs on macOS? (I am on a mobile device and can’t check it myself.)

Off topic, but I love the design of the linked web site.

drob518

3 months ago

1 reply

After skimming the docs and the site, I suspect this is x86-only for now. No mention of ARM or other processor architectures and the listed hardware support suggests a PC hardware target. You could probably cross compile on an Apple silicon Mac and run under emulation (e.g., QEMU).

vkdev0

3 months ago

That's right, currently only the x86-64 architecture is supported.

JonChesterfield

3 months ago

1 reply

> Loko’s runtime uses concurrency based on Concurrent ML.

That one could be a big deal.

https://scheme.fail/manual/loko.html#Concurrency

The docs don't mention channels and say that fibres are built on limited continuations (call/cc) which suggests missing some of the clever stuff in CML (e.g. that threads deadlocked on a channel get garbage collected)

bjoli

3 months ago

While being heavily inspired guile-fibers, it seems to not actually be parallel.

Anyway, I would say it is actually the nicest way to write concurrent programs. It supports you and helps you to not shoot yourself in the foot, while also staying out of the way.

wkjagt

3 months ago

2 replies

This is super interesting. I kind of want to use this to turn one of my old laptops into a Scheme machine. But from the docs I think on bare metal it's only usable over serial.

vkdev0

3 months ago

1 reply

I did successfully run the bare-metal Loko image on the ThinkPad x230 with GUI, mouse and keyboard access.

wkjagt

3 months ago

1 reply

OOh nice, I am certainly going to try it then!

vkdev0

3 months ago

1 reply

To have a working keyboard with en-us keys layout and LAN (Intel's NIC card) you need to build image from the latest development version, it might be an EFI or a legacy MBR image. The REPL is only interpreted, it does not have runtime bindings (I mean you can't change the running system state because REPL creates new library instances) and it does not compile at runtime.

wkjagt

3 months ago

I know what I'll be playing with this week :)

pkphilip

3 months ago

It can be made to work over Qemu

pkphilip

3 months ago

This looks nice and very interesting that this runs on bare metal. Is more documentation / tutorials available anywhere?

EDIT: Found the documentation: https://scheme.fail/manual/loko.html

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ID: 45500422Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 6:36:47 PM