Dave Thompson · Spritely Institute · October 28, 2026
\nWe are excited to announce the release of Hoot 0.10.0! Hoot\nis a Scheme to WebAssembly compiler backend for\nGuile, as well as a general purpose\nWebAssembly toolchain. In other words, Scheme in the browser!
\nThis release contains new features and bug fixes and since the 0.9.0\nrelease back in May.
\nOn Friday (October 30th 2026), the autumn edition of the Lisp Game\nJam will begin! It's\na 10-day long game jam where participants make games using their\nfavorite flavor of Lisp.
\nDoes making a small web game in Scheme using Hoot sound appealing to\nyou? Well, then we have just the thing to get you started: the Hoot\ngame jam\ntemplate! This\ntemplate project has everything you need to start making an HTML5 game\nwith Hoot quickly.
\nThe template repository includes:
\nBindings to the necessary web APIs to make an interactive game with
HTML5 canvas
A Makefile for compiling, running a development web server, and
generating a .zip bundle for uploading to itch.io
A very simple Breakout-like example game that demonstrates how to
put all the pieces together
For more inspiration, here are some games made with Hoot for past\njams:
\n\nNow, onto the release notes!
\ndefine-module libraries.Fixed locate-library not respecting configured load extensions.
Previously, we were using Guile's load extension parameter instead\nof Hoot's own.
Added %struct-ref and %struct-set! primitives for accessing
record types defined using the interpreter.
Stopped raising errors when importing an undefined symbol in the
runtime module system. Guile is lax about this so Hoot being strict\ncaused compatibility issues.
primitive-eval.Fixed keyword argument parsing for procedures with both optional and
keyword arguments in primitive-eval.
Fixed error messages regarding runtime module registry to include
the correct CLI flag: -fruntime-modules.
Added partial implementation of
SRFI-13: String\nLibraries. It's just a set of re-exports, very similar to Guile,\nbut Guile's SRFI-13 module is not declarative and is thus rejected\nby Hoot's compiler.
Added partial implementation of
SRFI-60: Integers\nas Bits.
Added define-macro, defmacro, delete, list->symbol, and
symbol to (guile).
Exported define-syntax-parameter and syntax-parameterize,
symbol-append, integer-length, and gensym from (guile).
Added list->bitvector and bitvector to (hoot bitvectors) and
re-exported them in (guile).
get-bytevector-all in (rnrs io ports).bytevector=? a publicly exported procedure from (hoot bytevectors) and (rnrs bytevectors).Added define-syntax-parameter and syntax-parameterize
primitives.
(ice-9 exceptions) exports to more closely match Guile.(rnrs) module.(rnrs base) module.(rnrs syntax-case) module.(rnrs r5rs) module.(rnrs hashtables) module.(rnrs files) module.(rnrs enums) module.(rnrs exceptions) module.(rnrs arithmetic fixnums) module.(rnrs records inspection) module.(rnrs records procedural) module.(rnrs records syntactic) module.(rnrs io simple) module.(rnrs io ports) module.port-has-position? to (hoot ports) for R6RS compatibility.Added stubs for centered division to (hoot numbers) and a stub for
integer-length to (hoot bitwise) for R6RS compatibility\n(eventually).
(rnrs bytevectors) as an R6RS module with version (6).Fixed number->string to round floating point decimal part to an
even digit.
Fixed number->string for floating point numbers ±2^N, where 52 <=
N <= 1023.
Fixed incorrect bytevector copy in number->string floating point
conversion algorithm.
min/max macros not working when given zero arguments.log procedure in (guile).Fixed the implementation of negate in guile. It was doing
entirely the wrong thing.
Port numbers are now validated to be exact integers in the range [1,
65535].
Actually complain about invalid option or unknown subcommand.
Previously, the code that was supposed to do this was unreachable.
Add --experimental-wasm-exnref feature flag when running hoot compile --run=node for continued compatibility with supported
NodeJS versions that don't have the new Wasm exnref feature enabled\nby default.
Fixed build-time disabling of hoot server. In past releases, the
hoot CLI script would still attempt to load should-be-optional\nlibraries that ./configure had already determined to be missing.\nThanks to mcc for discovering this blunder.
Improved instructions in "Building from source" section of the
manual.
Dependencies are now mentioned in the "Advanced path" section of the
README.
Updated project template README to say Guix is not required
(though it's still the easiest option).
Hoot is available in GNU Guix:
\n$ guix pull\n$ guix install guile guile-hootAlso, Hoot is now available in\nDebian, though it will\ntake awhile for this release to make it there.
\nOtherwise, Hoot can be built from source via our release tarball. See\nthe Hoot homepage for a download link and GPG signature.
\nDocumentation for Hoot 0.10.0, including build instructions, can be\nfound\nhere.
\nFor bug reports, pull requests, or just to follow along with\ndevelopment, check out the Hoot project on\nCodeberg.
\nIf you build something cool with Hoot, let us know on our community\nforum!
\nThanks to Z572, stdh, Walter Lewis, and Jelle Licht for their\ncontributions to this release.
\nUntil next time, happy hooting! 🦉
\nYour support makes our work possible! If you like what we do, please\nconsider becoming a Spritely supporter today!
\nOriginally published at Spritely Institute.
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