From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Why is Elisp slow? Date: Mon, 06 May 2019 13:25:51 -0400 Message-ID: References: <83tvebn1we.fsf@gnu.org> <20190503125832.44ovncaxp3vyjsla@Ergus> <20190504133218.g3ysx3ksuyvlthg3@Ergus> <831BD780-F954-4E23-BF31-ED4E135C919B@icloud.com> <20190506125848.okei2qrib7m5p3vx@Ergus> <20190506161757.wg4wy3vr7emxnciv@Ergus> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="270051"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.0.50 (gnu/linux) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon May 06 19:31:40 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hNhSm-00187F-GE for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 May 2019 19:31:40 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:59863 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hNhSl-0007vt-Fw for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 May 2019 13:31:39 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:36919) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hNhNU-0003x7-DO for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2019 13:26:13 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hNhNS-000474-If for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2019 13:26:12 -0400 Original-Received: from [195.159.176.226] (port=60294 helo=blaine.gmane.org) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hNhNQ-000448-Mr for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2019 13:26:10 -0400 Original-Received: from list by blaine.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hNhNL-0011xV-SV for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2019 19:26:03 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Cancel-Lock: sha1:wk7TPeg+W6kbQBkORC3Ga6rzzcg= X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 195.159.176.226 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:120232 Archived-At: I totally agree with the sentiment; we'd benefit from "out-sourcing" the maintenance of the language implementation, but we can't just replace Elisp with something else, so we need to find another well-maintained Elisp implementation that's at least as good as that we have now. AFAIK the options are: - Keep what we have - Move to Guile - Move to CLISP - Move to SBCL CLISP is not actively maintained nowadays. AFAIK SBCL is alive and kicking, but I'm not sure how well it works on platforms other than GNU/Linux-on-AMD64. Of course, Guile has the advantage that someone has already spent a fair bit of time implementing support for Elisp, whereas for CLISP and SBCL that would be extra work (Elisp is close to a subset of CL but not quite). Another approach would be to implement an Elisp-to-JS compiler and then use one of the heavily-optimized JIT-compilers for JS. Compiling Elisp to JS should be much easier than compiling to native code. Stefan