Installing Guile from Source

It's not hard, but the HACKING file doesn't cover it all, so here's the rest.

Debian Packages

TL;DR: Do the following.

$ sudo apt install git

$ git clone https://git.sv.gnu.org/git/guile.git

$ cd guile

$ sudo apt install -y \
        autoconf automake libtool gettext flex \
        autopoint libreadline-dev pkg-config libgmp-dev \
        libunistring-dev libgc-dev make gperf texinfo

$ ./autogen.sh

$ ./configure

$ make -j 16

$ sudo make install

$ sudo ldconfig

$ guile

Now in more detail.

Here are the dependencies mentioned in the HACKING file:

$ sudo apt install autoconf automake libtool gettext flex

Then ./autogen.sh wants the following, due to the presence of gettext:

$ sudo apt install autopoint

I wouldn't want to use a REPL without readline support, so install that, too:

$ sudo apt install libreadline-dev

./configure will complain unless all of the following are installed:

$ sudo apt install pkg-config libgmp-dev libunistring-dev libgc-dev

Then of course you need make, but also gperf (for some reason) and texinfo for documentation:

$ sudo apt install make gperf texinfo

Installation

After sudo make install, guile will be installed under /usr/local/, but will fail to run until you first refresh the loader's knowledge of where shared objects are:

$ sudo ldconfig

Finally, guile is ready:

$ guile
GNU Guile 3.0.6.7-3bce5
Copyright (C) 1995-2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Guile comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `,show w'.
This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `,show c' for details.

Enter `,help' for help.
scheme@(guile-user)>