Re: Getting ready to land native-compilation on master

[Pip Cet <pipcet@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2021 at 2:04 PM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> AFAICT, we are quite ready to land this important feature.  The branch
> was tested on several systems and is in good shape: many issues and
> bugs were fixed, and currently no known issues remain that block the
> merge.  (There's a lot yet to do wrt documenting the feature and its
> various aspects, but that can be done on master after merging.)

There are still (theoretical, at least) miscompilation bugs, last I
checked. I don't think these should block the merge and there's plenty
of time to fix them on the master branch.

I must say I'm unhappy with many of the changes that are introduced
outside of comp.c/comp.el (asynchronous compilation as a
default/forced-on-users feature, the .eln handling, the way
natively-compiled functions are subrs even though they have virtually
nothing in common with them...). But, again, that's also something
that can be discussed more reasonably once the branch has been merged,
and there's perhaps less of an attitude of owning the branch.

I also think that it would be reasonable to merge only the "essential"
native-compilation features at first, and leaving out things like the
half-written SSA optimizer that's currently on the branch (or was last
I checked). But my understanding is Andrea is unwilling to consider
this option, and it's much better to have a master branch that Andrea
continues to work on.

> If no significant issues pop up within a week, I will ask Andrea to
> merge the branch onto master the next weekend (i.e. around 17th of
> April).

Hooray!

> Last, but not least: I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Andrea
> for his hard work and perseverance during this last year.  We would
> not be where we are now with this feature without his devotion and
> determination to see this through.  Thanks a lot!

Thank you, Andrea!

Pip