From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs rewrite in a maintainable language Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 17:20:53 +0200 Message-ID: <87vbaa7q22.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <561A19AB.5060001@cumego.com> <87io6dl0h0.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87lhb82qxc.fsf@gmail.com> <87oag4jk74.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87k2qrki45.fsf@wanadoo.es> <8737xf9je9.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <83d1wiztt3.fsf@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1444749721 11391 80.91.229.3 (13 Oct 2015 15:22:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 15:22:01 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 13 17:21:59 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Zm1Ok-0005Dy-QC for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 17:21:54 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:36811 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zm1Ok-00058F-BE for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:21:54 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43651) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zm1No-00050i-0n for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:21:01 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zm1Nn-0002HV-2n for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:20:55 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:36081) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zm1Nm-0002HN-R7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:20:54 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:49899 helo=lola) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1Zm1Nl-0003Os-Vj; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 11:20:54 -0400 Original-Received: by lola (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 6358EDF4F8; Tue, 13 Oct 2015 17:20:53 +0200 (CEST) In-Reply-To: <83d1wiztt3.fsf@gnu.org> (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Tue, 13 Oct 2015 18:12:24 +0300") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.0.50 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 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.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:191474 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii writes: >> From: David Kastrup >> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 12:01:50 +0200 >> >> > If it can leverage what the contributor already knows about Elisp, >> > I'm all for it. I wonder what RMS' and Eli's reaction would be. >> >> There is the GUILE branch. > > First, Guile's Scheme is not Emacs Lisp, there are significant > differences. Uh, the topic was rewriting Emacs in a Lisp-like language performing better than Elisp. I was pointing out that treating this topic as if something like that would be totally new was leaving out a significant bit of history. > Second, Guile itself is written in C, so what exactly is gained here? As I wrote and you removed in order to pretend I didn't, the GUILE compiler stack is posited a whole lot better for native code generation than Elisp and does a better job even on its own byte code machine. > Third, AFAIR the Guile branch doesn't replace all of Emacs's C core. Most definitely not. > Fourth, that branch is far from ready for prime time (as you know and > point out). So it makes more sense to discuss branches that have not even started? Without even considering the lessons learnt so far on the GUILE branch? Is this discussion intended to stay at the level of pipe dreams? >> GUILE's byte compiler is supposed to do a better job than Elisp. > > But for now it has known problems with ELisp (some tests fail). Also, > at least Guile's own byte code (the *.go files) are not > architecture-independent, so building a Guile Emacs will need a long > compilation on the target machine. Not a catastrophe, but hardly a > nice thing. Yes, certainly much worse than our fantasy Lisp-like language compiling into machine code that has no problem interfacing with half of Emacs and replacing the rest. -- David Kastrup