Folks may also be interested that this version, 6.0, supports Crunch(although Crunch itself has not been declared a 1.0 status, currently @ .993), which is a compiler for a statically typed subset of Scheme R7RS. (https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggref/6/crunch)
valorzard•Aug 11, 2026
CRUNCH is really cool, I helped make it work better on Windows (although it requires a bit of setup)
orsenthil•Aug 11, 2026
For an introduction:
CHICKEN is a compiler that translates Scheme source files into C, which in turn can be fed to a C compiler to generate a standalone executable. An interpreter is also available and can be used as a scripting environment or for testing programs before compilation.
rtpg•Aug 11, 2026
does this mean that you can't do `eval`-like things in "production" systems?
p_l•Aug 11, 2026
IIRC not compiled (you can include the interpreter).
But then Scheme was always less EVAL-friendly of the lisps
shakna•Aug 11, 2026
I'm not seeing the less friendly... Eval, and sandboxing eval, are builtin features of the Scheme standard.
bandrami•Aug 11, 2026
It has eval but it lacks reader macros (or at least it did thirty years ago) which is what makes eval useful on lisp2 systems.
trescenzi•Aug 11, 2026
I started playing with Chicken over the weekend because I was looking for a scheme that you could build binaries of and that had a lively ecosystem. I've really enjoyed it. So far I've mostly played with web stuff. Built a wrapper around makemkvcon for ripping some dvds I've been meaning to rip that'll do a little bit of automatic naming of output using the tv db.
I was slightly worried that I'd start using v5 and then v6 would come out but it looked like they'd been working on it for a while so I figured I'd have some time on v5. Turns out I was wrong!
ziotom78•Aug 11, 2026
I was eagerly waiting for this release, which brings full Unicode support.
Congratulations to the team, Chicken Scheme is a little gem!
rmunn•Aug 11, 2026
For those who use Chicken Scheme: what made you pick it over other Lisps? What are some things it does particularly well?
whartung•Aug 11, 2026
The compiler. That’s the gem of the system.
The generated C is reasonably portable, so you can run Scheme programs on systems that “don’t run Scheme”.
ziotom78•Aug 11, 2026
Absolutely. And eggs too [1]: these are libraries provided by the community, very easy to import and use.
What happens if you try to run Python eggs under Chicken? Do you get Roko's Basilisk? :-)
sph•Aug 11, 2026
Pythons are too cold to hatch Chicken eggs, and viceversa
hellcow•Aug 11, 2026
The eggs are great. For instance I can be up and running building an SDL2 game or make a webserver quickly.
It has good emacs support with geiser-chicken.
Because it compiles down to C the FFI provides a lot of nice ergonomics beyond what I get with Chez Scheme.
Error messages are actually useful with a stacktrace. Can't overstate this.
It supports optional type definitions which reduces the number of tests I need.
The docs are adequate, though I frequently add "MIT scheme" to my search queries. I wasn't able to get chicken-doc setup in NixOS, and the docs website has gone down on me a bunch lately. I wish Chicken had complete documentation available including its eggs in an offline format, like a PDF.
anta40•Aug 11, 2026
What about Gambit?
Perhaps it's a better, optimizing compiler but the built-in library is rather minimalist?
atemerev•Aug 11, 2026
Self-contained, compact, compiled, fast, ready to use.
SBCL is not compact and its "image" concept is not universally liked by everyone.
Why do people use chicken over gambit? Is it due to chicken’s larger ego system and eggs, or is there more?
danialsams•Aug 11, 2026
ngl this is a massive update full R7Rs support UTF-8 strings and they finally ditched blobs for bytevectors the closure reuse otpimization sounds interesting too ngl
anthk•Aug 11, 2026
Uhm. I'm divided. Common Lisp it's the weird cousin, bloated at first but in the end you get SBCL, ECL or CCL and almost everything will work the same. With Scheme, you need to instal SRFI's to complete SICP exercises and then there's R5RS and R7RS.
You have no way to run Hypergiant under Guile. In Common Lisp, tons of packages for QuickLisp/UltraLisp will run on SBCL, CCL and ECL with ease.
In the end Scheme+Dependencies can be more convoluted than a subset of Common Lisp (you can avoid CLOS if you don't need it for instance).
zelphirkalt•Aug 11, 2026
I only used Chicken for a short time, because of a UTF-8 bug it had/has, but I always liked Chicken's docs. They seem to be written with care and often make things understandable. When I look up Scheme things and don't understand something, sometimes I specifically go for the Chicken Scheme docs, to see if I understand its explanation.
10 Comments
CHICKEN is a compiler that translates Scheme source files into C, which in turn can be fed to a C compiler to generate a standalone executable. An interpreter is also available and can be used as a scripting environment or for testing programs before compilation.
But then Scheme was always less EVAL-friendly of the lisps
I was slightly worried that I'd start using v5 and then v6 would come out but it looked like they'd been working on it for a while so I figured I'd have some time on v5. Turns out I was wrong!
Congratulations to the team, Chicken Scheme is a little gem!
The generated C is reasonably portable, so you can run Scheme programs on systems that “don’t run Scheme”.
[1] https://wiki.call-cc.org/eggs
It has good emacs support with geiser-chicken.
Because it compiles down to C the FFI provides a lot of nice ergonomics beyond what I get with Chez Scheme.
Error messages are actually useful with a stacktrace. Can't overstate this.
It supports optional type definitions which reduces the number of tests I need.
The docs are adequate, though I frequently add "MIT scheme" to my search queries. I wasn't able to get chicken-doc setup in NixOS, and the docs website has gone down on me a bunch lately. I wish Chicken had complete documentation available including its eggs in an offline format, like a PDF.
SBCL is not compact and its "image" concept is not universally liked by everyone.
Guile and Racket are not fast (nor compact).
Chez Scheme is not "ready to use".
You have no way to run Hypergiant under Guile. In Common Lisp, tons of packages for QuickLisp/UltraLisp will run on SBCL, CCL and ECL with ease.
In the end Scheme+Dependencies can be more convoluted than a subset of Common Lisp (you can avoid CLOS if you don't need it for instance).