On Sun, Jun 19, 2022, 9:39 PM Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 7:02 PM Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> > Currently compiling a top-level expression wrapped in
>> > eval-when-compile by itself leaves no residue in the compiled  output,
>>
>> `eval-when-compile` has 2 effects:
>>
>> 1- Run the code within the compiler's process.
>>    E.g.  (eval-when-compile  (require 'cl-lib)).
>>    This is somewhat comparable to loading a gcc plugin during
>>    a compilation: it affects the GCC process itself, rather than the
>>    code it emits.
>>
>> 2- It replaces the (eval-when-compile ...) thingy with the value
>>    returned by the evaluation of this code.  So you can do (defvar
>>    my-str (eval-when-compile (concat "foo" "bar"))) and you know that
>>    the concatenation will be done during compilation.
>>
>> > but I would want to make the above evaluate to an object at run-time
>> > where the exported symbols in the obstack are immutable.
>>
>> Then it wouldn't be called `eval-when-compile` because it would do
>> something quite different from what `eval-when-compile` does :-)
>>
>>
> The informal semantics of "eval-when-compile" from the elisp info file are
> that
>      This form marks BODY to be evaluated at compile time but not when
>      the compiled program is loaded.  The result of evaluation by the
>      compiler becomes a constant which appears in the compiled program.
>      If you load the source file, rather than compiling it, BODY is
>      evaluated normally.
> I'm not sure what I have proposed that would be inconsistent with "the
> result of evaluation
> by the compiler becomes a constant which appears in the compiled program".
> The exact form of that appearance in the compiled program is not specified.
> For example, the byte-compile of (eval-when-compile (cl-labels ((f...) (g
> ...)))
> currently produces a byte-code vector in which f and g are byte-code
> vectors with
> shared structure.  However, that representation is only one choice.
>
> It is inconsistent with the semantics of *symbols* as they currently
> stand, as I have already admitted.
> Even there, you could advance a model where it is not inconsistent.  For
> example,
> if you view the binding of symbol to value as having two components - the
> binding and the cell
> holding the mutable value during the extent of the symbol as a
> global/dynamically scoped variable,
> then having the binding of the symbol to the final value of the cell
> before the dynamic extent of the variable
> terminates would be consistent.  That's not how it's currently
> implemented, because there is no way to
> express the final compile-time environment as a value after compilation
> has completed with the
> current semantics.
>
> The part that's incompatible with current semantics of symbols is
> importing that symbol as
> an immutable symbolic reference.  Not really a "variable" reference, but
> as a binding
> of a symbol to a value in the run-time namespace (or package in CL
> terminology, although
> CL did not allow any way to specify what I'm suggesting either, as far as
> I know).
>
> However, that would capture the semantics of ELF shared objects with the
> text and ro_data
> segments loaded into memory that is in fact immutable for a userspace
> program.
>

It looks to me like the portable dump code/format could be adapted to serve
the purpose I have in mind here.  What needs to be added is a way to limit
the scope of the dump so only the appropriate set of objects are captured.
There would probably also need to be a separate load-path for these
libraries similar to the approach employed for native compiled files.
It could be neat if all LISP code and constants eventually lived in some
larger associated compilation units (scope-limited pdmp file), to have a
residual dump at any time of the remaining live objects, most corresponding
to the space of global/dynamic variables. That could in turn be used for
local debugging or in actual bug reporting.

Lynn