From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2023 19:44:01 +0300 Message-ID: <834jl8kvxq.fsf@gnu.org> References: <20230809094655.793FC18A4654@snark.thyrsus.com> <83y1ikl6yo.fsf@gnu.org> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="3120"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: esr@thyrsus.com Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Wed Aug 09 18:44:27 2023 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1qTmIM-0000cA-5R for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Wed, 09 Aug 2023 18:44:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qTmHb-0006pW-Pu; Wed, 09 Aug 2023 12:43:39 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qTmHZ-0006pI-GI for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 09 Aug 2023 12:43:37 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1qTmHZ-0000dU-49; Wed, 09 Aug 2023 12:43:37 -0400 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=References:Subject:In-Reply-To:To:From:Date: mime-version; bh=nUWt8HA9UxRyimVZvk+eZupYyrpLUJ7jduq6BG2o5bY=; b=JmcVUwjpv007 MRi/rtOYJaBYM9I/H9bWvjwd3mwmhRFrzh4bKjWi9SBuXpJqtsTCKwYF4OPd87wlA3cs5VlhiwaKb FCWJUpCI2Eb+ldMeyBOvEwmH+UmvKiZaQQWINUDJEA7PyBNGvFQFT6WFlpeLsWXgR5LNFvnGsKc2x ezEqu0JJYSNmESNlvV0ZGaMMcGnuokDYMadmA9k4jmIWaCAcR87UwORdJaR97O/D1goiT02TS9tr3 t5Zpzp+ZZApSXYUAsVOM7OkHLfnyIi+tZ9SHuM7Y8NdFf+m8BfLwdDgOuhBRKnCNg8EB6YL9twOeY YJAQ6TRfXGOAZNU8P4yI2g==; In-Reply-To: (esr@thyrsus.com) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:308487 Archived-At: > Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2023 12:11:21 -0400 > From: "Eric S. Raymond" > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org > > Eli Zaretskii : > > For veteran and stable code such as this one, we should not rewrite > > them in Lisp just because we can. We should have much more serious > > and good reasons for such changes. > > Well, that's awkward. I think I have a serious and good reason to > shrink the core as much as possible, but it's one I'm not yet prepared > to talk about because I don't want to over-promise. I was hoping I > could sneak up on it with a bunch of safe, small changes. Sorry, no sneaking. If you have some plan for serious changes, please bring that up and let's talk about them. It's quite possible that what you have in mind would justify moving parts to Lisp. But even then, we should do that as little as possible, because our users don't expect to get Emacs 30 that is significantly less stable than Emacs 29, and our bitter experience is that moving stuff to Lisp does just that. > > Even the simple change you did a few days ago broke the build > > on one system and raised a couple of issues some of which are not yet > > resolved, and others we don't even have a good way of resolving except > > by bracing for bug reports. > > I want to understand the failure better, then, so I can avoid > repeating it. What build broke, and how? What remaining issues are > there? I CC'ed you on the message which described that, see: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2023-08/msg00138.html The build that broke was the MS-Windows build. It broke because you didn't replace Fdelete_file call in a function that is used only on MS-Windows (that's the 3rd bullet in the list of issues I mention there). > (I did of course test te chane with a make bootstrap.) Emacs has at least half a dozen different configurations and supported platforms, and it's unreasonable to expect a bootstrap on one of them to uncover all of the problems. So I'm not surprised that you didn't see the problems. One more reason not to touch such code unless really necessary. Thanks.