Shrinking the C core

Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Recently I have been refamiliarizing myself with the Emacs C core.

Some days ago, as a test that I understand the C core API and the
current build recipe, I made and pushed a small commit that moved
the policy code in delete-file out to Lisp, basing it on a smaller
and simpler new entry point named delete-file-internal (this is
parallel to the way delete-directory is already partitioned).

I've since been poking around the C core code and am now wondering why
there is so much C-core code that seems like it could be pushed out to
Lisp.  For example, in src/fileio.c:

DEFUN ("unhandled-file-name-directory", Funhandled_file_name_directory,
       Sunhandled_file_name_directory, 1, 1, 0,
       doc: /* Return a directly usable directory name somehow associated with FILENAME.
A `directly usable' directory name is one that may be used without the
intervention of any file name handler.
If FILENAME is a directly usable file itself, return
\(file-name-as-directory FILENAME).
If FILENAME refers to a file which is not accessible from a local process,
then this should return nil.
The `call-process' and `start-process' functions use this function to
get a current directory to run processes in.  */)
  (Lisp_Object filename)
{
  Lisp_Object handler;

  /* If the file name has special constructs in it,
     call the corresponding file name handler.  */
  handler = Ffind_file_name_handler (filename, Qunhandled_file_name_directory);
  if (!NILP (handler))
    {
      Lisp_Object handled_name = call2 (handler, Qunhandled_file_name_directory,
					filename);
      return STRINGP (handled_name) ? handled_name : Qnil;
    }

  return Ffile_name_as_directory (filename);
}

Why is this in C? Is there any reason not to push it out to Lisp and
reduce the core complexity?  More generally, if I do this kind of
refactor, will I be stepping on anyone's toes?
--
						>>esr>>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Andreas Schwab]

On Aug 09 2023, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Why is this in C?

Probably only because it is called from C.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>:
> On Aug 09 2023, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> 
> > Why is this in C?
> 
> Probably only because it is called from C.

That must be a historical relic, then.  There are lots of calls from
the C core out to Lisp functions.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Andreas Schwab]

On Aug 09 2023, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>:
>> On Aug 09 2023, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>> 
>> > Why is this in C?
>> 
>> Probably only because it is called from C.
>
> That must be a historical relic, then.

It surely is, more than 30 years old.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:

> Recently I have been refamiliarizing myself with the Emacs C core.
>
> Some days ago, as a test that I understand the C core API and the
> current build recipe, I made and pushed a small commit that moved
> the policy code in delete-file out to Lisp, basing it on a smaller
> and simpler new entry point named delete-file-internal (this is
> parallel to the way delete-directory is already partitioned).
>
> I've since been poking around the C core code and am now wondering why
> there is so much C-core code that seems like it could be pushed out to
> Lisp.  For example, in src/fileio.c:
>
> DEFUN ("unhandled-file-name-directory", Funhandled_file_name_directory,
>        Sunhandled_file_name_directory, 1, 1, 0,
>        doc: /* Return a directly usable directory name somehow associated with FILENAME.
> A `directly usable' directory name is one that may be used without the
> intervention of any file name handler.
> If FILENAME is a directly usable file itself, return
> \(file-name-as-directory FILENAME).
> If FILENAME refers to a file which is not accessible from a local process,
> then this should return nil.
> The `call-process' and `start-process' functions use this function to
> get a current directory to run processes in.  */)
>   (Lisp_Object filename)
> {
>   Lisp_Object handler;
>
>   /* If the file name has special constructs in it,
>      call the corresponding file name handler.  */
>   handler = Ffind_file_name_handler (filename, Qunhandled_file_name_directory);
>   if (!NILP (handler))
>     {
>       Lisp_Object handled_name = call2 (handler, Qunhandled_file_name_directory,
> 					filename);
>       return STRINGP (handled_name) ? handled_name : Qnil;
>     }
>
>   return Ffile_name_as_directory (filename);
> }
>
> Why is this in C? Is there any reason not to push it out to Lisp and
> reduce the core complexity?

There is a plenitude of such reasons.  Whenever some code is moved to
Lisp, its structure and history is lost.  Often, comments within the
extracted C code remain, but the code itself is left ajar.  Bootstrap
problems are frequently introduced, as well as latent bugs.  And Emacs
becomes ever so much slower.

These are not simply theoretical concerns, but problems I've encountered
many times in practice.  Compounding that, fileio.c is abundant with
complex logic amended and iteratively refined over many years, which is
dangerously prone to loss or mistranscription during a refactor or a
rewrite.

Finally, this specific case is because we don't want to provide Lisp
with an easy means to bypass file name handlers.  All primitives
operating on file names should thus consult file name handlers, enabling
packages like TRAMP to continue operating correctly.

> More generally, if I do this kind of refactor, will I be stepping on
> anyone's toes?

Probably.  I think a better idea for a first project is this item in
etc/TODO:

** A better display of the bar cursor
Distribute a bar cursor of width > 1 evenly between the two glyphs on
each side of the bar (what to do at the edges?).

which has been on my plate for a while.  I would be grateful to anyone
who decides to preempt me.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Date: Wed,  9 Aug 2023 05:46:55 -0400 (EDT)
> 
> Why is this in C?

History, I'm quite sure.

> Is there any reason not to push it out to Lisp and
> reduce the core complexity?  More generally, if I do this kind of
> refactor, will I be stepping on anyone's toes?

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.  Good reasons include adding some
significant new feature or extension, supporting new kinds of
filesystems, etc.  Otherwise, this just introduces unnecessary
instability and maintenance burden into code that was working well for
eons.  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.

In addition to the obvious issues with moving code from C to Lisp,
there are a few less obvious.  One example: functions defined in C are
always available, whereas those defined in Lisp are only available
once the corresponding Lisp file was loaded.  This matters during
loadup, and even if currently we either don't use the affected
primitives during dumping, or use them only after the corresponding
Lisp file is loaded, it makes the build process more fragile, because
now changing the order of loading the files in loadup or adding some
Lisp to loadup and other preloaded files runs the risk of breaking the
build due to these dependencies.

Another example: moving stuff to Lisp causes code that previously
couldn't GC to potentially trigger GC.  So now various parts of Emacs
which call this primitive from C will need to be prepared to have GC
where they previously could assume no GC.  How do you even assess the
risks from that in a program like Emacs, what with all our hooks etc.?

This is not academic: we had and have these problems all the time, and
they are usually quite hard to debug and solve.

We don't need such gratuitous maintenance head-aches, and we don't
need the risk of introducing subtle bugs into code which worked for
decades and which we are used to rely on and trust -- unless there are
very good reasons for that.  And good reasons in my book are only
those which develop and extend Emacs, and add new and useful features.

So please let's not do that without such reasons.  New code that adds
new primitives -- sure, we should discuss whether this or that part
needs to be in C, and prefer Lisp implementations whenever we can.
But not the old and trusted code like this one -- those should be
rewritten only for very good reasons.  And even when we do have such
good reasons, whether they justify rewriting existing stable code
should be discussed on a case by case basis, so we could consider the
possible alternatives and choose the best way of doing that.  Not
every extension that involves some primitive justifies rewriting or
reimplementing that primitive.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
> There is a plenitude of such reasons.  Whenever some code is moved to
> Lisp, its structure and history is lost.  Often, comments within the
> extracted C code remain, but the code itself is left ajar.  Bootstrap
> problems are frequently introduced, as well as latent bugs.  And Emacs
> becomes ever so much slower.

When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
hardware, not even on tiny SBCs. 

> Finally, this specific case is because we don't want to provide Lisp
> with an easy means to bypass file name handlers.  All primitives
> operating on file names should thus consult file name handlers, enabling
> packages like TRAMP to continue operating correctly.

If calling the file-name handlers through Lisp is a crash landing,
you were already out of luck.  Go have a look at delete-directory.

> Probably.  I think a better idea for a first project is this item in
> etc/TODO:

This would ... not be my first project. :-)
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> 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.

>       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 did of course test te chane with a make bootstrap.)

> So please let's not do that without such reasons.

Noted.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2023 12:11:21 -0400
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> > 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.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> Sorry, no sneaking.  If you have some plan for serious changes, please
> bring that up and let's talk about them.

Tempting, but...no.  Not yet.  I have another major project I need to
finish, or nearly finish, first.

https://gitlab.com/esr/shimmer

"A tool to manage issues, merge-request, or mailing-list message
threads embedded in a Git repository. Replaces centralized software forges by
allowing all project metadata to travel with the repository, with fast
notifications via email."

Centralized forge sites need to die because they are single points of technical
failure and chokepoints for rent-seeking and political capture.  This is not a
theoretical issue, we've seen technical collapse at Berlios and destructive
ewnt-seeking at SourceForge.

I love Emacs but this has higher priority. I'm not even going to
broach the possibility of another large project until this one is well
launched.

I was hoping to make small changes to smoothe the way for what I have in mind,
but if I can't do that I can't do that.

> I CC'ed you on the message which described that, see:
> 
>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2023-08/msg00138.html

Thank you.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:

> When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
> enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
> I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
> hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.

Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?

Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
> "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
> 
> > When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
> > enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
> > I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
> > hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.
> 
> Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
> two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?

Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
than the Emacs of, say, 1990.

And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
for audio signal processing.

If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
won't do it.

> Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.

They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My
earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
that sort of thing is limited.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 1:19 PM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> To: "Po Lu" <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
>
> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
> > "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
> >
> > > When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
> > > enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
> > > I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
> > > hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.
> >
> > Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
> > two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?
>
> Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
> instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
> advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
> scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
> predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.
>
> And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
> brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
> seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
> psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
> instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
> down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
> for audio signal processing.
>
> If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
> through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
> deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
> a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
> are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
> with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
> won't do it.
>
> > Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.
>
> They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
> engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
> as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck.

It's a habit of his.  Can't fix without blowing his fuse.

> My earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
> predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
> expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
> that sort of thing is limited.
> --
> 		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
>
>
>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric Frederickson]

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:

> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
>> "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
>> 
>> > When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
>> > enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
>> > I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
>> > hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.
>> 
>> Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
>> two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?
>
> Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
> instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
> advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
> scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
> predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.
>
> And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
> brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
> seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
> psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
> instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
> down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
> for audio signal processing.
>
> If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
> through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
> deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
> a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
> are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
> with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
> won't do it.
>
>> Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.
>
> They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
> engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
> as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My
> earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
> predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
> expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
> that sort of thing is limited.

Sorry to jump in, but I can't resist.

You're critical of others for not showing you deep respect as a Developer of the
Highest Caliber, and yet you act with the absurd intention of "sneaking up on"
changes? And then refuse to reveal your apparently grand intentions underlying
this sleight-of-hand project?

Emacs is a program that I and many thousands of others rely on every day to get
work done; please don't pollute its development ecosystem with that utter
nonsense.

- Eric Frederickson

> -- 
> 		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Sam James]

Eric Frederickson <ericfrederickson68@gmail.com> writes:

> "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
>
>> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
>>> "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
>>> 
>>> > When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
>>> > enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
>>> > I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
>>> > hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.
>>> 
>>> Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
>>> two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?
>>
>> Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
>> instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
>> advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
>> scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
>> predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
>> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.
>>
>> And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
>> brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
>> seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
>> psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
>> instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
>> down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
>> for audio signal processing.
>>
>> If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
>> through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
>> deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
>> a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
>> are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
>> with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
>> won't do it.
>>
>>> Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.
>>
>> They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
>> engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
>> as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My
>> earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
>> predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
>> expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
>> that sort of thing is limited.
>
> Sorry to jump in, but I can't resist.
>
> You're critical of others for not showing you deep respect as a Developer of the
> Highest Caliber, and yet you act with the absurd intention of "sneaking up on"
> changes? And then refuse to reveal your apparently grand intentions underlying
> this sleight-of-hand project?

While not being up front about the changes is of debatable wisdom, I
didn't find it particularly alarming given I at least have always
understood the aim to be to have the C core as small as possible anyway.

I presume esr was under the same impression and hence even if he never
went through with his big plan, it'd be some easy wins from his perspective.

Laying the groundwork for something that may or may not come off with
independent changes one believes are worthwhile isn't underhanded if
it's just a pipedream in the back of your head but you think the changes
are good in isolation.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

"Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:

> Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
> instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
> advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
> scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
> predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.

The important measure is how much slower it will be compared to the
Emacs of today.  The Emacs of yesteryear is not relevant at all: simply
grab a copy of Emacs 23.1, and compare the speed of CC Mode font lock
there (on period hardware) to the speed of CC Mode font lock on
contemporary hardware today.

> They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
> engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
> as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My

Projecting much?

I raised those concerns because I have seen them and suffered their
consequences.  There is no place for hubris: analogous changes were also
performed by equally skilled and experienced Emacs developers, only for
issues to be uncovered years in the future.  (For example, when a call
to `with-temp-buffer' was introduced to loadup.)

How many times must we suffer the consequences of indiscriminate
refactoring before we will recognize the obvious conclusion that
code which doesn't need to change, shouldn't?

> earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
> predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
> expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
> that sort of thing is limited.

If that is the attitude by which you treat other Emacs developers, then
from my POV this debate is over.  We cannot work with you, when you
dismiss real-world concerns that have been seen innumerable times in
practice, based on a conceited view of your own skill.

Which, BTW, has already broken the build once.  And the jury is still
out on whether your earlier change needs to be reverted, since Andrea
has yet to ascertain if it will lead to negative consequences for native
compilation.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> writes:

> While not being up front about the changes is of debatable wisdom, I
> didn't find it particularly alarming given I at least have always
> understood the aim to be to have the C core as small as possible anyway.

I don't think that's true.  The C core can evolve as much as it wants,
with explicit action taken to reduce it if necessary, or if doing so
assists flexibility.

But that's besides the point.  Transcribing venerable and complex code
like fileio.c wholesale is out of the question, at least absent very
solid justifications attested by concrete plans to make use of the
changes.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2023 at 2:28 PM
> From: "Po Lu" <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
>
> "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
>
> > Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
> > instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
> > advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
> > scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
> > predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
> > than the Emacs of, say, 1990.
>
> The important measure is how much slower it will be compared to the
> Emacs of today.  The Emacs of yesteryear is not relevant at all: simply
> grab a copy of Emacs 23.1, and compare the speed of CC Mode font lock
> there (on period hardware) to the speed of CC Mode font lock on
> contemporary hardware today.
>
> > They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
> > engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
> > as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My
>
> Projecting much?
>
> I raised those concerns because I have seen them and suffered their
> consequences.  There is no place for hubris: analogous changes were also
> performed by equally skilled and experienced Emacs developers, only for
> issues to be uncovered years in the future.  (For example, when a call
> to `with-temp-buffer' was introduced to loadup.)
>
> How many times must we suffer the consequences of indiscriminate
> refactoring before we will recognize the obvious conclusion that
> code which doesn't need to change, shouldn't?

At one time I proposed to have an basic emacs version that would not
need changes.  Meaning, no bugs recognised, but no new features added.

An emacs project that is complete, with no more changes done.  At a level
that is manageable for one person.


> > earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
> > predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
> > expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
> > that sort of thing is limited.
>
> If that is the attitude by which you treat other Emacs developers, then
> from my POV this debate is over.  We cannot work with you, when you
> dismiss real-world concerns that have been seen innumerable times in
> practice, based on a conceited view of your own skill.
>
> Which, BTW, has already broken the build once.  And the jury is still
> out on whether your earlier change needs to be reverted, since Andrea
> has yet to ascertain if it will lead to negative consequences for native
> compilation.
>
>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Sam James <sam@gentoo.org>
> Cc: esr@thyrsus.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2023 03:07:58 +0100
> 
> While not being up front about the changes is of debatable wisdom, I
> didn't find it particularly alarming given I at least have always
> understood the aim to be to have the C core as small as possible anyway.

There are no such goals, no, not where I'm standing.  We do prefer to
implement new features and extensions in Lisp if they can reasonably
be implemented in Lisp, but rewriting existing C code in Lisp is not a
goal in and off itself.

> Laying the groundwork for something that may or may not come off with
> independent changes one believes are worthwhile isn't underhanded if
> it's just a pipedream in the back of your head but you think the changes
> are good in isolation.

Assuming I understand what you mean by that: we've been burnt in the
past by people who started working on some grand changes, made
package-wide preparatory modifications, and then left to greener
pasture without arriving at any point where those changes have any
usefulness.  That's net loss: the code is less clear, gets in the way
of the muscle memory of veteran Emacs hackers (who used to know by
heart where some particular piece of code lives and how it works), and
brings exactly zero advantages to justify these downsides.  So now I'd
prefer to start such changes only if there's a more-or-less clear and
agreed-upon plan for the new features, and generally do that on a
feature branch, so that we could avoid changes on master before they
are really useful and agreed-upon.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2023 21:19:11 -0400
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
> > "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
> > 
> > > When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
> > > enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
> > > I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
> > > hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.
> > 
> > Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
> > two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?
> 
> Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
> instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
> advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
> scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
> predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.
> 
> And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
> brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
> seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
> psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
> instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
> down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
> for audio signal processing.

This kind of argument is inherently flawed: it's true that today's
machines are much faster than those in, say, 1990, but Emacs nowadays
demands much more horsepower from the CPU than it did back then.
What's more, Emacs is still a single-threaded Lisp machine, although
in the last 10 years CPU power develops more and more in the direction
of multiple cores and execution units, with single execution units
being basically as fast (or as slow) today as they were a decade ago.

And if these theoretical arguments don't convince you, then there are
facts: the Emacs display engine, for example, was completely rewritten
since the 1990s, and is significantly more expensive than the old one
(because it lifts several of the gravest limitations of the old
redisplay).  Similarly with some other core parts and internals.

We are trying to make Lisp programs faster all the time, precisely
because users do complain about annoying delays and slowness.  Various
optimizations in the byte-compiler and the whole native-compilation
feature are parts of this effort, and are another evidence that the
performance concerns are not illusory in Emacs.  And we are still not
there yet: people still do complain from time to time, and not always
because someone selected a sub-optimal algorithm where better ones
exist.

The slowdown caused by moving one primitive to Lisp might be
insignificant, but these slowdowns add up and eventually do show in
user-experience reports.  Rewriting code in Lisp also increases the GC
pressure, and GC cycles are known as one of the significant causes of
slow performance in quite a few cases.  We are currently tracking the
GC performance (see the emacs-gc-stats@gnu.org mailing list) for that
reason, in the hope that we can modify GC and/or its thresholds to
improve performance.

> If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
> through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
> deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
> a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
> are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
> with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
> won't do it.

We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
practice.

> > Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.
> 
> They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
> engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
> as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My
> earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
> predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
> expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
> that sort of thing is limited.

Please be more patient, and please consider what others here say to be
mostly in good-faith and based on non-trivial experience.  If
something in what others here say sounds like an offense to your
intelligence, it is most probably a misunderstanding: for most people
here English is not their first language, so don't expect them to
always be able to find the best words to express what they want to
say.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 10/08/2023 04:19, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> basic considerations of clocks per second would
> predict it to run a*dead minimum*  of two orders of magnitude faster
> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.

In addition to the examples made by others, I'll say that the sizes of 
software projects have increased from 1990 as well. So if you have a 
Lisp routine that simply enumerates the files in one project, it has to 
do proportionally more work.

 > And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
 > brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
 > seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
 > psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
 > instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
 > down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
 > for audio signal processing.

I've had to expend significant effort on many occasions to keep various 
command execution times below 0.17, or 0.02, or etc.

Which is to say, while I'm very much in favor of the "lean core" concept 
myself, we should accompany far-reaching changes like that with 
appropriate benchmarking.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Sam James <sam@gentoo.org>:
> I presume esr was under the same impression and hence even if he never
> went through with his big plan, it'd be some easy wins from his perspective.
> 
> Laying the groundwork for something that may or may not come off with
> independent changes one believes are worthwhile isn't underhanded if
> it's just a pipedream in the back of your head but you think the changes
> are good in isolation.

Exactly so.  Experience has taught me the value of sneaking up on big
changes in such a way that if you have to bail out midway through the
grand plan you have still added value.  And reducing the maintainence
complexity of the core is a good thing in itself.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> Assuming I understand what you mean by that: we've been burnt in the
> past by people who started working on some grand changes, made
> package-wide preparatory modifications, and then left to greener
> pasture without arriving at any point where those changes have any
> usefulness.

I completely agree that this is a failure mode to be avoided.  Preparatory
changes have to be wortwhile in themselves.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev>:
> Which is to say, while I'm very much in favor of the "lean core" concept
> myself, we should accompany far-reaching changes like that with appropriate
> benchmarking.

Fair enough!
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> We are trying to make Lisp programs faster all the time,
> precisely because users do complain about annoying delays
> and slowness. Various optimizations in the byte-compiler and
> the whole native-compilation feature are parts of this
> effort

It's very fast with that, we should encourage more people do
use native-compilation.

>> If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
>> through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
>> deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
>> a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
>> are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
>> with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
>> won't do it.
>
> We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
> practice.

In theory Lisp can be as fast as any other language but in
practice it is not the case with Elisp and Emacs at least.

Here is a n experiment with stats how Emacs/Elisp compares
to SBCL/CL, for this particular one it shows that Elisp, even
natively compiled, is still +78875% slower than Common Lisp.

;;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-
;;
;; this file:
;;   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/fib.el
;;
;; the CL:
;;   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/cl/fib.cl
;;
;; code from:
;;   elisp-benchmarks-1.14
;;
;; commands: [results]
;;   $ emacs -Q -batch -l fib.el                    [8.660 s]
;;   $ emacs -Q -batch -l fib.elc                   [3.386 s]
;;   $ emacs -Q -batch -l fib-54a44480-bad305eb.eln [3.159 s]
;;   $ sbcl -l fib.cl                               [0.004 s]
;;
;; (stats)
;;   plain  -> byte:     +156%
;;   plain  -> native:   +174%
;;   plain  -> sbcl:  +216400%
;;
;;   byte   -> native:     +7%
;;   byte   -> sbcl:   +84550%
;;
;;   native -> sbcl:   +78875%

(require 'cl-lib)

(defun compare-table (l)
  (cl-loop for (ni ti) in l
           with first = t
        do (setq first t)
           (cl-loop for (nj tj) in l
                 do (when first
                      (insert "\n")
                      (setq first nil))
                    (unless (string= ni nj)
                      (let ((imp (* (- (/ ti tj) 1.0) 100)))
                        (when (< 0 imp)
                          (insert
                            (format ";; %s -> %s: %+.0f%%\n" ni nj imp) )))))))

(defun stats ()
  (let ((p '("plain"  8.660))
        (b '("byte"   3.386))
        (n '("native" 3.159))
        (s '("sbcl"   0.004)) )
    (compare-table (list p b n s)) ))

(defun fib (reps num)
  (let ((z 0))
    (dotimes (_ reps)
      (let ((p1 1)
            (p2 1))
        (dotimes (_ (- num 2))
          (setf z (+ p1 p2)
                p2 p1
                p1 z))))
    z))

(let ((beg (float-time)))
  (fib 10000 1000)
  (message "%.3f s" (- (float-time) beg)) )

;; (shell-command "emacs -Q -batch -l \"~/.emacs.d/emacs-init/fib.el\"")
;; (shell-command "emacs -Q -batch -l \"~/.emacs.d/emacs-init/fib.elc\"")
;; (shell-command "emacs -Q -batch -l \"~/.emacs.d/eln-cache/30.0.50-3b889b4a/fib-54a44480-8bbda87b.eln\"")

(provide 'fib)

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eric S. Raymond wrote:

> Exactly so. Experience has taught me the value of sneaking
> up on big changes in such a way that if you have to bail out
> midway through the grand plan you have still added value.

And even when you complete it, the added value often proves to
be the real gain.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> What's more, Emacs is still a single-threaded Lisp machine, although
> in the last 10 years CPU power develops more and more in the direction
> of multiple cores and execution units, with single execution units
> being basically as fast (or as slow) today as they were a decade ago.

Yeah, I've been thinking hard about that single-threadedness in the
last couple of weeks.  I have a design sketch in my head for a
re-partitioning of Emacs into a front-end/back-end pair communicating
via sockets, with the back end designed to handle multiple socket
sessions for collaborative editing. (No, this isn't my big secret idea,
it's something I think should be done *along with* my big secret idea.)

For this to work, a lot of what is now global state would need to be
captured into a structure associated with each socket session.  I notice
that it's difficult to find an obviously correct cut line between what
the session structure should own and what still needs to be shared state;
like, *some* keymaps definitely need to be session and buffers still need
to be shared, but what about the buffer's mode set and mode-specific kemaps?
Or marks?  Or overlays?

This is a difficult design problem because of some inherent features
of the Emacs Lisp language model.  I did not fail to notice that those
same features would make exploiting concurrency difficult even in the
present single-user-only implementation.  It is unclear what
could be done to fix this without significant language changes.

> And if these theoretical arguments don't convince you, then there are
> facts: the Emacs display engine, for example, was completely rewritten
> since the 1990s, and is significantly more expensive than the old one
> (because it lifts several of the gravest limitations of the old
> redisplay).  Similarly with some other core parts and internals.

Are you seriously to trying to tell me that the display engine rewrite ate
*three orders of magnitude* in machine-speed gains?  No sale.  I have
some idea of the amount of talent on the devteam and I plain do not
believe y'all are that incompetent.

> We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
> practice.

I'm not persuaded, because your causal account doesn't pass my smell
test. I think you're misdiagnosing the performance problems through
being too close to them. It would take actual benchmark figures to
persuade me that Lisp interpretive overhead is the actual culprit.

Your project, your choices. But I have a combination of experience
with the code going back nearly to its origins with an outside view of
its present strate, and I think you're seeing your own assumptions
about performance lag reflected back at you more than the reality.

> Please be more patient,

That *was* patient. I didn't aim for his head until the *second*
time he poked me. :-)

I'll stop trying to make preparatory changes.  If I can allocate
enough bandwidth for the conversation, I may try on a couple of
hopefully thought-provoling design questions.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2023 at 11:49 AM
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> To: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>
> Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
>
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> > What's more, Emacs is still a single-threaded Lisp machine, although
> > in the last 10 years CPU power develops more and more in the direction
> > of multiple cores and execution units, with single execution units
> > being basically as fast (or as slow) today as they were a decade ago.
>
> Yeah, I've been thinking hard about that single-threadedness in the
> last couple of weeks.  I have a design sketch in my head for a
> re-partitioning of Emacs into a front-end/back-end pair communicating
> via sockets, with the back end designed to handle multiple socket
> sessions for collaborative editing. (No, this isn't my big secret idea,
> it's something I think should be done *along with* my big secret idea.)
>
> For this to work, a lot of what is now global state would need to be
> captured into a structure associated with each socket session.  I notice
> that it's difficult to find an obviously correct cut line between what
> the session structure should own and what still needs to be shared state;
> like, *some* keymaps definitely need to be session and buffers still need
> to be shared, but what about the buffer's mode set and mode-specific kemaps?
> Or marks?  Or overlays?
>
> This is a difficult design problem because of some inherent features
> of the Emacs Lisp language model.  I did not fail to notice that those
> same features would make exploiting concurrency difficult even in the
> present single-user-only implementation.  It is unclear what
> could be done to fix this without significant language changes.
>
> > And if these theoretical arguments don't convince you, then there are
> > facts: the Emacs display engine, for example, was completely rewritten
> > since the 1990s, and is significantly more expensive than the old one
> > (because it lifts several of the gravest limitations of the old
> > redisplay).  Similarly with some other core parts and internals.
>
> Are you seriously to trying to tell me that the display engine rewrite ate
> *three orders of magnitude* in machine-speed gains?  No sale.  I have
> some idea of the amount of talent on the devteam and I plain do not
> believe y'all are that incompetent.
>
> > We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
> > practice.
>
> I'm not persuaded, because your causal account doesn't pass my smell
> test. I think you're misdiagnosing the performance problems through
> being too close to them. It would take actual benchmark figures to
> persuade me that Lisp interpretive overhead is the actual culprit.
>
> Your project, your choices. But I have a combination of experience
> with the code going back nearly to its origins with an outside view of
> its present strate, and I think you're seeing your own assumptions
> about performance lag reflected back at you more than the reality.
>
> > Please be more patient,
>
> That *was* patient.

> I didn't aim for his head until the *second* time he poked me. :-)

Good you're not a general in a battlefield !  I don't have such rules of conduct.
Did you know that there are tribes in the Amazon River Basin who simply kill
you if they see you ?


> I'll stop trying to make preparatory changes.  If I can allocate
> enough bandwidth for the conversation, I may try on a couple of
> hopefully thought-provoling design questions.
> --
> 		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
>
>
>
>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2023 17:19:22 -0400
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: Eric Frederickson <ericfrederickson68@gmail.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Sam James <sam@gentoo.org>:
> > I presume esr was under the same impression and hence even if he never
> > went through with his big plan, it'd be some easy wins from his perspective.
> > 
> > Laying the groundwork for something that may or may not come off with
> > independent changes one believes are worthwhile isn't underhanded if
> > it's just a pipedream in the back of your head but you think the changes
> > are good in isolation.
> 
> Exactly so.  Experience has taught me the value of sneaking up on big
> changes in such a way that if you have to bail out midway through the
> grand plan you have still added value.

If each individual change has clear added value, yes.  The problem is,
usually they don't, not IME with this project.  I have too many gray
hair with this false assumption.

> And reducing the maintainence complexity of the core is a good thing
> in itself.

There's no such thing as a separate "maintainence complexity of the
core" in Emacs (assuming by "core" you allude to the C code).  The
routine maintenance in Emacs includes both the C code and the Lisp
code that is part of the low-level infrastructure.  files.el,
simple.el, subr.el, and many other *.el files (basically, everything
that's loaded in loadup.el, and then some, like dired.el) -- all those
constitute the core of Emacs, and are under constant supervision and
attention of the maintainers and core developers.

Moving old and well-tested C code out to Lisp usually _increases_
maintenance burden, because the old code in most cases needs _zero_
maintenance nowadays.  Thus, the condition of the changes to have
added value is not usually fulfilled, and we need "other
considerations" to justify the costs.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2023 19:49:49 -0400
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> > What's more, Emacs is still a single-threaded Lisp machine, although
> > in the last 10 years CPU power develops more and more in the direction
> > of multiple cores and execution units, with single execution units
> > being basically as fast (or as slow) today as they were a decade ago.
> 
> This is a difficult design problem because of some inherent features
> of the Emacs Lisp language model.  I did not fail to notice that those
> same features would make exploiting concurrency difficult even in the
> present single-user-only implementation.  It is unclear what
> could be done to fix this without significant language changes.

This stuff was discussed lately in several threads on this list.  And
yes, finding which parts of the global state to leave shared and which
to make private to threads is a large part of the issue.  My personal
opinion is that introducing concurrency into Emacs will need redesign
of the internals, not just some changes.  But that's me.

> > And if these theoretical arguments don't convince you, then there are
> > facts: the Emacs display engine, for example, was completely rewritten
> > since the 1990s, and is significantly more expensive than the old one
> > (because it lifts several of the gravest limitations of the old
> > redisplay).  Similarly with some other core parts and internals.
> 
> Are you seriously to trying to tell me that the display engine rewrite ate
> *three orders of magnitude* in machine-speed gains?  No sale.  I have
> some idea of the amount of talent on the devteam and I plain do not
> believe y'all are that incompetent.

First, I don't know where did you take the 3 orders of magnitude
figure.  During 1990s, PCs generally had 100 to 200 MHz clocks, and
nowadays we have ~3.5 GHz clocks -- that's 1.5 order of magnitude, not
3.  As we all know, chip clock speeds stalled around 2004; processing
power continues growing due to multiprocessing, but that doesn't help
Emacs, because Lisp mostly runs on a single execution unit.

Second, the new display engine uses up many more GUI (Xlib, Cairo
etc.) API calls than the old one did -- and that takes some
significant additional processing.  Moreover, no amount of Emacs
devteam talent can do anything about the code quality and algorithms
in those libraries and components of the OS.

Third, the new display engine was not just a rewrite of the old
capabilities: it _added_ quite a lot of functionalities that were
either very hard to implement or plainly not possible with the old
one.  These additional functionalities are nowadays used very widely,
and they do eat CPU power.

And finally, there are plain facts: users do complain about slow
operation, including during redisplay, in some (fortunately, usually
rare) situations.

As an example perhaps closer to your heart: certain VC-related
operations are slow enough (hundreds of milliseconds to seconds, and
sometimes minutes!) to annoy users.  VCS repositories can be very
large these days, and that could be part of the problem.  We just had
a long discussion here about the fastest possible way of collecting
all the files in a deep directory tree, see bug#64735
(https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=64735).  The somewhat
surprising findings there aside, one conclusion that stands out is the
time spent in GC takes a significant fraction of the elapsed time, and
that flies in the face of moving code from C to Lisp.

So even if the theoretical considerations don't convince you, the
facts should: we do have performance problems in Emacs, and they are
real enough for us to attempt to solve them by introducing non-trivial
complexity, such as the native-compilation feature.  We wouldn't be
doing that (in fact, IMO it would have been madness to do that) unless
the performance of Lisp programs was not a real issue.

> > We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
> > practice.
> 
> I'm not persuaded, because your causal account doesn't pass my smell
> test. I think you're misdiagnosing the performance problems through
> being too close to them. It would take actual benchmark figures to
> persuade me that Lisp interpretive overhead is the actual culprit.

People did benchmarks, you can find them in the archives.  When the
native-compilation was considered for inclusion, we did benchmark some
representative code to assess the gains.  The above-mentioned bug
discussion about traversing directories also includes benchmarks.

If you want to sample this further, try benchmarking shr.el when it
performs layout of HTML with variable-pitch fonts.  It basically does
what the display engine does all the time in C, but you can see how
much slower is this in Lisp, even after several iterations where we
looked for and found the fastest possible ways of doing the job in
Lisp.

You might be surprised and even astonished by these facts, to the
degree that you are reluctant to accept them, but they are facts
nonetheless.

> > Please be more patient,
> 
> That *was* patient. I didn't aim for his head until the *second*
> time he poked me. :-)

Well, then please be *more* patient.  People here are generally
well-meant, and certainly have the Emacs's best interests in their
minds, so shooting them too early is not the best idea, to put it
mildly.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 862 bytes --]

On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 10:03:49AM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

[...]

> This stuff was discussed lately in several threads on this list.  And
> yes, finding which parts of the global state to leave shared and which
> to make private to threads is a large part of the issue.  My personal
> opinion is that introducing concurrency into Emacs will need redesign
> of the internals, not just some changes.  But that's me.

Not only you -- I do agree thoroughly. The hard part is that most of
Emacs isn't aware that things can happen behind their respective backs.

Providing the low level mechanism is just putting the can opener to
Pandora's box: dealing with what comes out is definitely the more
interesting part :-)

(Don't get me wrong: the metaphor I used might imply I don't think it's
desirable. Quite on the contrary).

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Immanuel Litzroth]

On Fri, Aug 11, 2023 at 2:04 AM Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> > Sent: Friday, August 11, 2023 at 11:49 AM
> > From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
> > To: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>
> > Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
> >
> > Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>:
> > > What's more, Emacs is still a single-threaded Lisp machine, although
> > > in the last 10 years CPU power develops more and more in the direction
> > > of multiple cores and execution units, with single execution units
> > > being basically as fast (or as slow) today as they were a decade ago.
> >
> > Yeah, I've been thinking hard about that single-threadedness in the
> > last couple of weeks.  I have a design sketch in my head for a
> > re-partitioning of Emacs into a front-end/back-end pair communicating
> > via sockets, with the back end designed to handle multiple socket
> > sessions for collaborative editing. (No, this isn't my big secret idea,
> > it's something I think should be done *along with* my big secret idea.)
> >
> > For this to work, a lot of what is now global state would need to be
> > captured into a structure associated with each socket session.  I notice
> > that it's difficult to find an obviously correct cut line between what
> > the session structure should own and what still needs to be shared state;
> > like, *some* keymaps definitely need to be session and buffers still need
> > to be shared, but what about the buffer's mode set and mode-specific kemaps?
> > Or marks?  Or overlays?
> >
> > This is a difficult design problem because of some inherent features
> > of the Emacs Lisp language model.  I did not fail to notice that those
> > same features would make exploiting concurrency difficult even in the
> > present single-user-only implementation.  It is unclear what
> > could be done to fix this without significant language changes.
> >
> > > And if these theoretical arguments don't convince you, then there are
> > > facts: the Emacs display engine, for example, was completely rewritten
> > > since the 1990s, and is significantly more expensive than the old one
> > > (because it lifts several of the gravest limitations of the old
> > > redisplay).  Similarly with some other core parts and internals.
> >
> > Are you seriously to trying to tell me that the display engine rewrite ate
> > *three orders of magnitude* in machine-speed gains?  No sale.  I have
> > some idea of the amount of talent on the devteam and I plain do not
> > believe y'all are that incompetent.
> >
> > > We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
> > > practice.
> >
> > I'm not persuaded, because your causal account doesn't pass my smell
> > test. I think you're misdiagnosing the performance problems through
> > being too close to them. It would take actual benchmark figures to
> > persuade me that Lisp interpretive overhead is the actual culprit.
> >
> > Your project, your choices. But I have a combination of experience
> > with the code going back nearly to its origins with an outside view of
> > its present strate, and I think you're seeing your own assumptions
> > about performance lag reflected back at you more than the reality.
> >
> > > Please be more patient,
> >
> > That *was* patient.
>
> > I didn't aim for his head until the *second* time he poked me. :-)
>
> Good you're not a general in a battlefield !  I don't have such rules of conduct.
> Did you know that there are tribes in the Amazon River Basin who simply kill
> you if they see you ?
How did those tribes get to know about Eric?
i
-- 
-- A man must either resolve to point out nothing new or to become a
slave to defend it. -- Sir Isaac Newton

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Moving old and well-tested C code out to Lisp usually
> _increases_ maintenance burden, because the old code in most
> cases needs _zero_ maintenance nowadays.

One could maybe identify certain slow spots in Elisp and see
if there would be a point moving them to C.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:03:49 +0300
> From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
> Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> And finally, there are plain facts: users do complain about slow
> operation, including during redisplay, in some (fortunately, usually
> rare) situations.

Btw, another aspect of this is user expectations: where we previously
were accustomed to the fact that listing files in a directory takes
some perceptible time, we are now "spoiled rotten" by the speed of our
CPUs and filesystems.  So the overhead incurred by Emacs-specific
processing, like reading from subprocesses, consing Lisp objects, and
GC, which 20 years ago would be insignificant, is significant now, and
users pay attention.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2023 10:45:55 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Moving old and well-tested C code out to Lisp usually
> > _increases_ maintenance burden, because the old code in most
> > cases needs _zero_ maintenance nowadays.
> 
> One could maybe identify certain slow spots in Elisp and see
> if there would be a point moving them to C.

Yes, and we are doing that.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>>> Moving old and well-tested C code out to Lisp usually
>>> _increases_ maintenance burden, because the old code in
>>> most cases needs _zero_ maintenance nowadays.
>> 
>> One could maybe identify certain slow spots in Elisp and
>> see if there would be a point moving them to C.
>
> Yes, and we are doing that.

Okay, what spots are those, and how do you find them?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2023 14:12:12 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >>> Moving old and well-tested C code out to Lisp usually
> >>> _increases_ maintenance burden, because the old code in
> >>> most cases needs _zero_ maintenance nowadays.
> >> 
> >> One could maybe identify certain slow spots in Elisp and
> >> see if there would be a point moving them to C.
> >
> > Yes, and we are doing that.
> 
> Okay, what spots are those, and how do you find them?

We usually find them by profiling, or by finding we need
functionalities that would be hard or impossible to implement in Lisp.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

There are occasiona when it is useful, for added flexibility,
to move some function from C to Lisp.  However, stability
is an important goal for Emacs, so we should not even try
to move large amounts of code to Lisp just for the sake
of moving code to Lisp.

The rate at whic we have added features already causes significant
instability.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> There are occasiona when it is useful, for added
> flexibility, to move some function from C to Lisp. However,
> stability is an important goal for Emacs, so we should not
> even try to move large amounts of code to Lisp just for the
> sake of moving code to Lisp.

It is just cool that Emacs is written in two languages, it is
like to continents or something connected by bridges
overlapping certain areas.

Maybe we can use SBCL to compile Elisp, and after that
integrate it into Emacs so you would be able to run all old
Elisp without changing the code, only now it would in fact be
Common Lisp implementing Elisp, i.e. the opposite of our
cl-lib (`cl-loop' etc).

Maybe some normalization efforts would have to be done to the
syntax here and there as preparatory steps ...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2023 at 2:46 PM
> From: "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
> To: "Dmitry Gutov" <dmitry@gutov.dev>
> Cc: esr@thyrsus.com, luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
>
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> There are occasiona when it is useful, for added flexibility,
> to move some function from C to Lisp.  However, stability
> is an important goal for Emacs, so we should not even try
> to move large amounts of code to Lisp just for the sake
> of moving code to Lisp.
>
> The rate at whic we have added features already causes significant
> instability.

I concur.  Have been suggesting to have a basic version of emacs that would be considered
complete and stable, while minimizing the risk of instability due to feature additions.

Every project should have such aim and achieve it.  Clearly, the core requirements must
be well defined, and the scope limited in terms of the essential features to fulfill its
primary purpose.  Maintaining emacs for it to do everything could halt its continued
development structure.  Especially if it cannot be reasonable handled by a few people.

> --
> Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
>
>
>
>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> I concur. Have been suggesting to have a basic version of
> emacs that would be considered complete and stable, while
> minimizing the risk of instability due to feature additions.

We have a basic version, and then packets with more ...

> Every project should have such aim and achieve it. Clearly,
> the core requirements must be well defined, and the scope
> limited in terms of the essential features to fulfill its
> primary purpose. Maintaining emacs for it to do everything
> could halt its continued development structure.

Again, it is modular ...

Old Cathedral half-discontinued algorithm maybe works
_sometimes_ for small and/or very well-defined projects by
nature but Emacs is a world already, too late for that to ever
work, if indeed desired from the get go which is debatable ...

P2P review a nice way of putting it, another way is everyone
do as much as possible about everything and no, overhead
issues with maintenance complexity are a miniature detriment
compared to the immense gains all that software brings.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Christopher Dimech wrote:

> I concur. Have been suggesting to have a basic version of
> emacs that would be considered complete and stable, while
> minimizing the risk of instability due to feature additions.

No one wants a perfect piece of minimal software developed by
6 experts around the planet, gets old too fast.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2023 at 3:50 PM
> From: "Emanuel Berg" <incal@dataswamp.org>
> To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
>
> Christopher Dimech wrote:
>
> > I concur. Have been suggesting to have a basic version of
> > emacs that would be considered complete and stable, while
> > minimizing the risk of instability due to feature additions.
>
> No one wants a perfect piece of minimal software developed by
> 6 experts around the planet, gets old too fast.

For specific tasks, one does not use emacs in its entirety.  Although you're
raising a valid point, couldn't the rest of emacs be added on top of that ?
Would make it easier for some other groups of 6 guys to understand it and do
something with it, without needing years of experience managing all of it.

There would be some value in that.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev>, esr@thyrsus.com, luangruo@yahoo.com,
>  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2023 05:28:18 +0200
> 
> > The rate at whic we have added features already causes significant
> > instability.
> 
> I concur.  Have been suggesting to have a basic version of emacs that would be considered
> complete and stable, while minimizing the risk of instability due to feature additions.
> 
> Every project should have such aim and achieve it.  Clearly, the core requirements must
> be well defined, and the scope limited in terms of the essential features to fulfill its
> primary purpose.  Maintaining emacs for it to do everything could halt its continued
> development structure.  Especially if it cannot be reasonable handled by a few people.

This is exactly what I try to make happen.  But I don't claim to have
it all figured out in the best manner, so if someone knows how to do
that better without averting contributors OT1H and without
complicating development even more OTOH, I invite you to step up and
become a (co-)maintainer, and then practice what you preach.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2023 at 6:02 PM
> From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>
> To: "Christopher Dimech" <dimech@gmx.com>
> Cc: rms@gnu.org, dmitry@gutov.dev, esr@thyrsus.com, luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Shrinking the C core
>
> > From: Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>
> > Cc: Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev>, esr@thyrsus.com, luangruo@yahoo.com,
> >  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2023 05:28:18 +0200
> >
> > > The rate at whic we have added features already causes significant
> > > instability.
> >
> > I concur.  Have been suggesting to have a basic version of emacs that would be considered
> > complete and stable, while minimizing the risk of instability due to feature additions.
> >
> > Every project should have such aim and achieve it.  Clearly, the core requirements must
> > be well defined, and the scope limited in terms of the essential features to fulfill its
> > primary purpose.  Maintaining emacs for it to do everything could halt its continued
> > development structure.  Especially if it cannot be reasonable handled by a few people.
>
> This is exactly what I try to make happen.  But I don't claim to have
> it all figured out in the best manner

Glad to hear.  Although the comment was not a reprehension, other do have
the different idea for emacs to do anything.

> so if someone knows how to do
> that better without averting contributors OT1H and without
> complicating development even more OTOH, I invite you to step up and
> become a (co-)maintainer, and then practice what you preach.

There are already three co-maintainers, how many more are required exactly ?
And with a good number of others who one could consider as experts.

My focus is engaged in practices within a distinct realm that is not being
pursued by others, making your suggestion difficult to keep up.  You decide
to use what you  want.  What I can do is see if I can get others interested,
who could help you, if you want.

Felicitations
Kristinu

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> Maybe we can use SBCL to compile Elisp, and after that
> integrate it into Emacs so you would be able to run all old
> Elisp without changing the code, only now it would in fact be
> Common Lisp implementing Elisp, i.e. the opposite of our
> cl-lib (`cl-loop' etc).

You would at least need to convert between internal object
representation in Elisp and CL. Not to mention many other non-obvious
problems arising from subtle differences in the function behavior.

In principle, Emacs has support for external modules. But it is not
widely used.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>> Maybe we can use SBCL to compile Elisp, and after that
>> integrate it into Emacs so you would be able to run all old
>> Elisp without changing the code, only now it would in fact
>> be Common Lisp implementing Elisp, i.e. the opposite of our
>> cl-lib (`cl-loop' etc).
>
> You would at least need to convert between internal object
> representation in Elisp and CL.

But why is CL so much faster to begin with?

> Not to mention many other non-obvious problems arising from
> subtle differences in the function behavior.

Maybe one can fork SBCL into SBCL-E first and adapt it from
there since everything that involves changing existing Elisp
code, be it syntax or semantics, would be very impractical.

And we are also not unhappy with Elisp as a langauge, we just
want it to be faster, so what we need to do is discover and
extract the secrets of compiling Lisp into really fast
software, which we now have identified as being held by
SBCL ...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 235 bytes --]

On Sat, Aug 12, 2023 at 05:22:45AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:

> Maybe we can use SBCL to compile Elisp, and after that
> integrate it into Emacs [...]

- https://www.cliki.net/CL-Emacs
- https://xkcd.com/927/

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

tomas wrote:

>> Maybe we can use SBCL to compile Elisp, and after that
>> integrate it into Emacs [...]
>
> - https://www.cliki.net/CL-Emacs

It says:

  Also includes an elisp emulation package from
  Ingvar Mattsson: note that this is not the same as the CLOCC
  package below [...]
   
  CLOCC contains a package (elisp.lisp) that implements some
  part of elisp in CL.Also includes an elisp emulation package
  from Ingvar Mattsson: note that this is not the same as the
  CLOCC package below

Sounds cool (probably a cool guy, Ingvar Mattson BTW) however
changing software altogether because Elisp is slow, maybe
that's to burn down the house to kill the rats.

I am aware of Emacs forks as well as other implementations
altogether but then the problem arises everyone still wants to
use familiar software, e.g. Gnus, Emacs-w3m, ERC ...

But maybe one could integrate parts of that solution into
Emacs to have the cake and eat it as well. Is the CL in
CL-Emacs as fast as compiled CL from SBCL?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

tomas wrote:

> https://xkcd.com/927/

  HOW STANDARDS PROLIFERATE (See: A C chargers, character
  encodings, instant messaging, etc.) SITUATION: There are 14
  competing standards. Geek: 14?! Ridiculous! We need to
  develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use
  cases. Fellow Geek: Yeah! Soon: SITUATION: There are 15
  competing standards. {{Title text: Fortunately, the charging
  one has been solved now that we've all standardized on
  mini-USB. Or is it micro-USB? Shit.}}

Okay, but here it isn't about joining the CL standard, it is
the situation that we have "the Lisp editor" yet our Lisp is
much slower than other people's Lisp, and for no good reason
what I can understand as Emacs is C, and SBCL is C. What's the
difference, why is one so much faster than the other?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1060 bytes --]

On Sun, Aug 13, 2023 at 01:09:38AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> tomas wrote:
> 
> > https://xkcd.com/927/

Try a bit of lateral thinking: what if, before embarking into
a "let's do everything new, the old sucks" kind of thing those
proposing it would, at least, have a look at the attempts made
in this direction, and, you know, try to learn about why no
one of them took over the house?

This might yield a more interesting attempt.

As I see it, the main challenge for an Emacs maintainer isn't
that it is software, nor that it is a big, complex piece of
software. Rather, that its community is huge and diverse. Folks
are using it in extremely different ways (in part due to the
project's age), and moving something will break one usage dating
back to 1997 or something.

Still moving forward is a little wonder, and I'm genuinely in
awe of Eli's job (although I'm not happy about each and every
of his decisions, but I think that'll happen to everyone, due
to the situation sketched above and is thus part of it).

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

> But maybe one could integrate parts of that solution into
> Emacs to have the cake and eat it as well. Is the CL in
> CL-Emacs as fast as compiled CL from SBCL?

AFAIK, all the Emacs-like implementations mentioned on the web page run 
on unmodified CL implementations, so you get the speed of that CL 
implementation.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Andreas Schwab]

On Aug 13 2023, Emanuel Berg wrote:

> Okay, but here it isn't about joining the CL standard, it is
> the situation that we have "the Lisp editor" yet our Lisp is
> much slower than other people's Lisp, and for no good reason
> what I can understand as Emacs is C, and SBCL is C.

But SBCL is not portable.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510  2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

> Okay, but here it isn't about joining the CL standard, it is
> the situation that we have "the Lisp editor" yet our Lisp is
> much slower than other people's Lisp, and for no good reason
> what I can understand as Emacs is C, and SBCL is C. What's the
> difference, why is one so much faster than the other?

Just wanted to mention that SBCL is not implemented in C.  It only has a 
small C runtime containing various GC alternatives and hardware/OS 
dependent stuff.  The rest is Lisp, including bignums and compiler.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

tomas wrote:

> As I see it, the main challenge for an Emacs maintainer
> isn't that it is software, nor that it is a big, complex
> piece of software. Rather, that its community is huge and
> diverse. Folks are using it in extremely different ways (in
> part due to the project's age), and moving something will
> break one usage dating back to 1997 or something.
>
> Still moving forward is a little wonder, and I'm genuinely
> in awe of Eli's job (although I'm not happy about each and
> every of his decisions, but I think that'll happen to
> everyone, due to the situation sketched above and is thus
> part of it).

Still, no good reason(s) what I can see why Elisp is so much
slower than Common Lisp ...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Gerd Möllmann wrote:

>> But maybe one could integrate parts of that solution into
>> Emacs to have the cake and eat it as well. Is the CL in
>> CL-Emacs as fast as compiled CL from SBCL?
>
> AFAIK, all the Emacs-like implementations mentioned on the
> web page run on unmodified CL implementations, so you get
> the speed of that CL implementation.

Uhm, what's an "unmodified CL implementation"?

And what implementations are those, you mean they are not as
fast as SBCL?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

>> You would at least need to convert between internal object
>> representation in Elisp and CL.
>
> But why is CL so much faster to begin with?

You did not yet show that CL is "much faster". Just that bignum
implementation in CL is much faster. And bignum performance is not
something that matters in practice.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Andreas Schwab wrote:

>> Okay, but here it isn't about joining the CL standard, it
>> is the situation that we have "the Lisp editor" yet our
>> Lisp is much slower than other people's Lisp, and for no
>> good reason what I can understand as Emacs is C, and SBCL
>> is C.
>
> But SBCL is not portable.

Step one would be to identify why SBCL is so much faster.
Say it is faster for reasons A, B, C and D. Surely A, B, C and
D are not all unportable features, so one would first try add
the same thing to the Elisp model.

If that fails maybe one would consider ECL or some other
faster, yet portable solution ...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Gerd Möllmann wrote:

>> Okay, but here it isn't about joining the CL standard, it
>> is the situation that we have "the Lisp editor" yet our
>> Lisp is much slower than other people's Lisp, and for no
>> good reason what I can understand as Emacs is C, and SBCL
>> is C. What's the difference, why is one so much faster than
>> the other?
>
> Just wanted to mention that SBCL is not implemented in C.
> It only has a small C runtime containing various GC
> alternatives and hardware/OS dependent stuff.

Ikr? Wise move! Like a real operating system ...

> The rest is Lisp, including bignums and compiler.

C is the fastest we have and SBCL don't even use it, they
don't need it. It is an embarrassment to the sport ...

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>>> You would at least need to convert between internal object
>>> representation in Elisp and CL.
>>
>> But why is CL so much faster to begin with?
>
> You did not yet show that CL is "much faster".

On the contrary, it is evident.

> Just that bignum implementation in CL is much faster.
> And bignum performance is not something that matters
> in practice.

Do we have a set of benchmarks in Elisp that everyone agrees
are good, and that can output data easily to show the results?
Didn't you do that with an ASCII table in a previous post?

Maybe I can use that source with minimal modifications to get
them to run in CL, so we can compare more broadly, but also in
an agreed-upon way. So it will not be about what really
matters or what people really use etc, it will only be about
performing as good as possible on those benchmarks, without
cheating obviously ;)

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> Do we have a set of benchmarks in Elisp that everyone agrees
> are good, and that can output data easily to show the results?
> Didn't you do that with an ASCII table in a previous post?
>
> Maybe I can use that source with minimal modifications to get
> them to run in CL, so we can compare more broadly, but also in
> an agreed-upon way. So it will not be about what really
> matters or what people really use etc, it will only be about
> performing as good as possible on those benchmarks, without
> cheating obviously ;)

See https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/elisp-benchmarks.html
These are the benchmarks we used during the discussion of native-comp
support.

-- 
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Org mode contributor,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

 >> AFAIK, all the Emacs-like implementations mentioned on the
 >> web page run on unmodified CL implementations, so you get
 >> the speed of that CL implementation.
 >
 > Uhm, what's an "unmodified CL implementation"?

The implemention as released by the project or vendor.

 >
 > And what implementations are those, you mean they are not as
 > fast as SBCL?

What the Emacs-alikes support varies.  I haven't checked recently, but I 
know that Lem, for instance, started by only supporting SBCL.  Hemlock 
is part of CMUCL and wasn't portable, hence Portable Hemlock.  There's 
also an Emacs-alike that is part of Lispworks' CL implementation 
(commencial).  And so on.  Please consult the project pages.

For some benchmarks on 10 CL implementations, please see

https://www.cliki.net/performance%20benchmarks

BTW, I get DNS errors when sending mail to you via Gmail. Don't know 
what's happening.

Reporting-MTA: dns; dataswamp.org

Final-Recipient: rfc822; incal@dataswamp.org
Action: failed

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> writes:

> BTW, I get DNS errors when sending mail to you via Gmail. Don't know 
> what's happening.

Same for me.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>> Do we have a set of benchmarks in Elisp that everyone
>> agrees are good, and that can output data easily to show
>> the results? Didn't you do that with an ASCII table in
>> a previous post?
>>
>> Maybe I can use that source with minimal modifications to
>> get them to run in CL, so we can compare more broadly, but
>> also in an agreed-upon way. So it will not be about what
>> really matters or what people really use etc, it will only
>> be about performing as good as possible on those
>> benchmarks, without cheating obviously ;)
>
> See https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/elisp-benchmarks.html
> These are the benchmarks we used during the discussion of
> native-comp support.

OK, I'm on it! I get back to you all, thanks for
the discussion.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>> Do we have a set of benchmarks in Elisp that everyone
>> agrees are good, and that can output data easily to show
>> the results? Didn't you do that with an ASCII table in
>> a previous post?
>>
>> Maybe I can use that source with minimal modifications to
>> get them to run in CL, so we can compare more broadly, but
>> also in an agreed-upon way. So it will not be about what
>> really matters or what people really use etc, it will only
>> be about performing as good as possible on those
>> benchmarks, without cheating obviously ;)
>
> See https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/elisp-benchmarks.html
> These are the benchmarks we used during the discussion of
> native-comp support.

Indeed, I see now in comments to my code that I got the my
initial fib.el [1] from elisp-benchmarks ...

But: 2 benchmarks implemented in CL! [bubble.cl yanked in full
last]

But this is just a sneak peak, not even a beta release, just
thought it could be interesting to see something tangible
after all this theorizing ...

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/cl/bench/bubble.cl
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/cl/bench/fib.cl

PS. Same old error message with Slime BTW, every time I start
   "slime-set-connection-info: Args out of range: 0". But then
   it seems to work fine. I saw this error message before,
   don't remember how I solved it then. It is the MELPA
   slime-20230730.1734, or 2.28 according to `slime-version'.

PPS. No C-u M-x slime-version RET BTW ...

[1] https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/fib.el

;; this file:
;;   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/cl/bench/bubble.cl
;;
;; original Elisp source:
;;   elisp-benchmarks

(load "~/public_html/cl/bench/timing.cl")

(let*((bubble-len 1000)
      (bubble-lst (mapcar #'random
                    (make-list bubble-len
                               :initial-element most-positive-fixnum) )))
  (defun bubble (lst)
    (declare (optimize speed (safety 0) (debug 0)))
    (let ((i (length lst)))
      (loop while (< 1 i) do
        (let ((b lst))
          (loop while (cdr b) do
            (when (< (cadr b) (car b))
              (rplaca b (prog1
                            (cadr b)
                          (rplacd b (cons (car b) (cddr b))) )))
            (setq b (cdr b))))
        (decf i) )
      lst) )

  (defun bubble-entry ()
    (loop repeat 100
          for l = (copy-list bubble-lst)
          do (bubble l) ))
  )

(timing (bubble-entry))

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Okay, but here it isn't about joining the CL standard, it is
  > the situation that we have "the Lisp editor" yet our Lisp is
  > much slower than other people's Lisp, and for no good reason
  > what I can understand as Emacs is C, and SBCL is C. What's the
  > difference, why is one so much faster than the other?

It's useful to investigate why this is so -- if someone finds
a fairly easy way to make Emacs faster, that could be good.

However, major redesign would be more trouble than it is worth.

Instead, please consider all the jobs we have NO good free software to
do.  Improving that free software from zero to version 0.1 would be a
far more important contribution to the Free World.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> Instead, please consider all the jobs we have NO good free
> software to do. Improving that free software from zero to
> version 0.1 would be a far more important contribution to
> the Free World.

Not necessarily since everyone uses speed - except for
amphetamine addicts, maybe - but very few do their jobs with
a piece of version 0.1 software.

But those trajectories don't contradict each other - on the
contrary actually, as even the 0.1 software use speed and
increased speed makes new such projects feasible as well.

Still, I get your point and would instead like to ask, what
jobs are they more exactly?

If you keep a drawer in the FSF building full of unprogrammed
"version 0.0 software", I'd be happy to take a look!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Step one would be to identify why SBCL is so much faster.

The short reason why SBCL is faster is that SBCL uses lots of type
checking and interference, which allows it to figure out optimizations
better.  And then using assembly to implement such optimizations.  CL
code compiled without DECLARE/DECLAIM is generally slow, but can be
made fast if you are very careful, and lucky that the things you need
are implemented as VOPs -- which are entierly unportable.

It also has the luxury of using a language that is set more or less in
stone, that doesn't change constantly.  Which means the developers can
spend quite a bit more time on optimizing what they have.

   If that fails maybe one would consider ECL or some other
   faster, yet portable solution ...

"Porting" Emacs to CL is not just slap ECL or some CL implementation
on top.  Adding type checking of the sort that SBCL does, would be
possible but ALOT of work.  It would most definitly require a entierly
new VM, and with that comes dragons.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    Step one would be to identify why SBCL is so much faster.
>
> The short reason why SBCL is faster is that SBCL uses lots of type
> checking and interference, which allows it to figure out optimizations
> better.  And then using assembly to implement such optimizations.  CL
> code compiled without DECLARE/DECLAIM is generally slow, but can be
> made fast if you are very careful, and lucky that the things you need
> are implemented as VOPs -- which are entierly unportable.

AFAIK, Elisp is full of type checks (all these BUFFERP/CHECK_STRING in
C code). Also, AFAIR, native-comp is making use of some of the type
checks as well, allowing some extra optimizations.

So, there might be some room for improvement after all.

Do you have some references detailing what SBCL does?

-- 
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Org mode contributor,
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Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   AFAIK, Elisp is full of type checks (all these BUFFERP/CHECK_STRING in
   C code). Also, AFAIR, native-comp is making use of some of the type
   checks as well, allowing some extra optimizations.

SBCL does far more detailed checks than that.  Which is why it makes
it very unportable, since the base case is trivial, but the optimized
one is not.  Check for example FLOOR in sbcl/src/code/numbers.lisp ,
and compare it to FLOOR in Emacs Lisp.

SBCL has many luxuries that Emacs does not have.

   So, there might be some room for improvement after all.

There is always a door for that ... but someone needs to open it.

   Do you have some references detailing what SBCL does?

http://www.sbcl.org/sbcl-internals/  and the source code.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> If you keep a drawer in the FSF building full of unprogrammed
> "version 0.0 software", I'd be happy to take a look!

I know about
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
and
https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html

-- 
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Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> one is not. Check for example FLOOR in
> sbcl/src/code/numbers.lisp , and compare it to FLOOR in
> Emacs Lisp.

Are we talking `floor' as in (floor 3.1415) ; 3 ?

How do we make a benchmark for that? Run it 1000+ times for
random floats? But maybe SBCL has faster random as well!

Actually, even I have a better random than Elisp:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/random-urandom/

It is more random than `random', using the Linux random.
But I didn't compare them in terms of speed. It is a so called
dynamic module, that is, not built-in but still written in C.

Anyway, I'd be happy to add something `floor' to the
benchmarks, for sure!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> Are we talking `floor' as in (floor 3.1415) ; 3 ?
>
> How do we make a benchmark for that? Run it 1000+ times for
> random floats? But maybe SBCL has faster random as well!

You can generate random number sequence first, excluding it from the
benchmark, and then benchmark mapping #'floor on the already generated
sequence. Ideally, use the same sequence for both Elisp and SBCL.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Aurélien Aptel]

On Wed, Aug 16, 2023 at 4:22 AM Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> wrote:
> Actually, even I have a better random than Elisp:
>
>   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/random-urandom/

Your pw_random_number() function is leaking the file descriptor. You
need to close fd each call.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>> Are we talking `floor' as in (floor 3.1415) ; 3 ?
>>
>> How do we make a benchmark for that? Run it 1000+ times for
>> random floats? But maybe SBCL has faster random as well!
>
> You can generate random number sequence first, excluding it
> from the benchmark, and then benchmark mapping #'floor on
> the already generated sequence. Ideally, use the same
> sequence for both Elisp and SBCL.

You are right, good idea. But maybe it is already known why
floor is slower in Elisp than SBCL?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Aurélien Aptel wrote:

>> Actually, even I have a better random than Elisp:
>>
>>   https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/random-urandom/
>
> Your pw_random_number() function is leaking the file
> descriptor. You need to close fd each call.

Ah, thanks!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

>> You can generate random number sequence first, excluding it
>> from the benchmark, and then benchmark mapping #'floor on
>> the already generated sequence. Ideally, use the same
>> sequence for both Elisp and SBCL.
>
> You are right, good idea. But maybe it is already known why
> floor is slower in Elisp than SBCL?

The discussion about floor started from Alfred using `floor' as an
example where CL uses system-dependent optimizations and thus being much
faster. https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/E1qVSLD-00079S-Gg@fencepost.gnu.org/ 

-- 
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Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>>> You can generate random number sequence first, excluding
>>> it from the benchmark, and then benchmark mapping #'floor
>>> on the already generated sequence. Ideally, use the same
>>> sequence for both Elisp and SBCL.
>>
>> You are right, good idea. But maybe it is already known why
>> floor is slower in Elisp than SBCL?
>
> The discussion about floor started from Alfred using `floor'
> as an example where CL uses system-dependent optimizations
> and thus being much faster.

So the answer to the question, Why is SBCL faster?
is "optimizations". And the answer to the question, Why don't
we have those optimizations? is "they are not portable"?

But isn't that what we do already with compilation and in
particular native compilation, why can't that add
optimizations for the native system?

Some commands/Elisp on that (compilation and native
compilation) as a side note, maybe someone finds them
entertaining:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/conf/.zsh/install-emacs
  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/native.el

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

>> The discussion about floor started from Alfred using `floor'
>> as an example where CL uses system-dependent optimizations
>> and thus being much faster.
>
> So the answer to the question, Why is SBCL faster?
> is "optimizations". And the answer to the question, Why don't
> we have those optimizations? is "they are not portable"?

Looking at
https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/blob/master/src/code/numbers.lisp#L390,
they employ certain x86-64-, x86-, ppc64-specific optimizations.

Althrough, Elisp's rounding_driver is not too bad actually. It also does
shortcuts depending on the argument type.

AFAIU, the main difference in SBCL vs. Elisp is that Elisp type checks
are often called repetitively on the same values. Even though the checks
are rather fast (typecheck is usually just a single xor + equal
operation), repetitive calls do add up.

And even this is not a definitive answer. I do not think that we can
point out a single reason why SBCL is faster. I am not even sure if SBCL
is _always_ faster.

> But isn't that what we do already with compilation and in
> particular native compilation, why can't that add
> optimizations for the native system?

If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing and
compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation also does not
touch C subroutines - the place where typechecks are performed.

-- 
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Org mode contributor,
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Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

> If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing
> and compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation
> also does not touch C subroutines - the place where
> typechecks are performed.

So our typechecks are not optimized, as we can native compile
Elisp but not C.

Worse, with dynamic typing they have to be used repeatedly and
during execution /o\

Point taken - but we are compiling the C subroutines so in
theory optimization of typechecks could happen there, and if
we use them more often and at a execution time, it would
actually be a bigger win for us than for them, i.e. SBCL, to
have them?

I guess SBCL just always have to be best at eeeverything ...

-- 
underground experts united
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   And even this is not a definitive answer. I do not think that we can
   point out a single reason why SBCL is faster. I am not even sure if SBCL
   is _always_ faster.

Always faster than what?  What are you comparing?  SBCL is a compiler,
Emacs is more than that.  

It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs Lisp VM
(or even native).  Just look at this call to (car "foo"), and compare
what happens in Emacs.

* (disassemble 'foo)
; disassembly for FOO
; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
; 3F:       488B042590060020 MOV RAX, [#x20000690]
; 47:       488945F8         MOV [RBP-8], RAX
; 4B:       48892C2560060020 MOV [#x20000660], RBP
; 53:       488B142518000020 MOV RDX, [#x20000018]
; 5B:       488D4210         LEA RAX, [RDX+16]
; 5F:       483B042520000020 CMP RAX, [#x20000020]
; 67:       7770             JA L2
; 69:       4889042518000020 MOV [#x20000018], RAX
; 71: L0:   488B0570FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-144]               ; "foo"
; 78:       488902           MOV [RDX], RAX
; 7B:       48C7420817010020 MOV QWORD PTR [RDX+8], #x20000117  ; NIL
; 83:       80CA07           OR DL, 7
; 86:       48312C2560060020 XOR [#x20000660], RBP
; 8E:       7402             JEQ L1
; 90:       CC09             INT3 9                           ; pending interrupt trap
; 92: L1:   4C8D4424F0       LEA R8, [RSP-16]
; 97:       4883EC30         SUB RSP, 48
; 9B:       BFAF0B1520       MOV EDI, #x20150BAF              ; 'LIST
; A0:       488B3551FFFFFF   MOV RSI, [RIP-175]               ; '(VALUES
                                                              ;   (SIMPLE-ARRAY ..))
; A7:       488B0552FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-174]               ; '("foo")
; AE:       498940F0         MOV [R8-16], RAX
; B2:       488B054FFFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-177]               ; "(CAR \"foo\")"
; B9:       498940E8         MOV [R8-24], RAX
; BD:       49C740E017010020 MOV QWORD PTR [R8-32], #x20000117  ; NIL
; C5:       B90C000000       MOV ECX, 12
; CA:       498928           MOV [R8], RBP
; CD:       498BE8           MOV RBP, R8
; D0:       B882B12620       MOV EAX, #x2026B182              ; #<FDEFN SB-C::%COMPILE-TIME-TYPE-ERROR>
; D5:       FFD0             CALL RAX
; D7:       CC10             INT3 16                          ; Invalid argument count trap
; D9: L2:   6A10             PUSH 16
; DB:       FF1425B0080020   CALL [#x200008B0]                ; #x21A00540: LIST-ALLOC-TRAMP
; E2:       5A               POP RDX
; E3:       EB8C             JMP L0
NIL
* 

   > But isn't that what we do already with compilation and in
   > particular native compilation, why can't that add
   > optimizations for the native system?

   If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing and
   compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation also does not
   touch C subroutines - the place where typechecks are performed.

SBCL implements a Lisp, Lisp by definition is dynamically typed. 

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

>    And even this is not a definitive answer. I do not think
>    that we can point out a single reason why SBCL is faster.
>    I am not even sure if SBCL is _always_ faster.
>
> Always faster than what? What are you comparing?

We are working on it.

> SBCL is a compiler, Emacs is more than that.

Including SBCL with SLIME, but that would still be CL with
SBCL and not Elisp which is what we are (not) comparing with.

> It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs
> Lisp VM (or even native). Just look at this call to (car
> "foo"), and compare what happens in Emacs.
>
> * (disassemble 'foo)
> ; disassembly for FOO
> ; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
> ; 3F:       488B042590060020 MOV RAX, [#x20000690]
> ; 47:       488945F8         MOV [RBP-8], RAX
> ; 4B:       48892C2560060020 MOV [#x20000660], RBP
> ; 53:       488B142518000020 MOV RDX, [#x20000018]
> ; 5B:       488D4210         LEA RAX, [RDX+16]
> ; 5F:       483B042520000020 CMP RAX, [#x20000020]
> ; 67:       7770             JA L2
> ; 69:       4889042518000020 MOV [#x20000018], RAX
> ; 71: L0:   488B0570FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-144]               ; "foo"
> ; 78:       488902           MOV [RDX], RAX
> ; 7B:       48C7420817010020 MOV QWORD PTR [RDX+8], #x20000117  ; NIL
> ; 83:       80CA07           OR DL, 7
> ; 86:       48312C2560060020 XOR [#x20000660], RBP
> ; 8E:       7402             JEQ L1
> ; 90:       CC09             INT3 9                           ; pending interrupt trap
> ; 92: L1:   4C8D4424F0       LEA R8, [RSP-16]
> ; 97:       4883EC30         SUB RSP, 48
> ; 9B:       BFAF0B1520       MOV EDI, #x20150BAF              ; 'LIST
> ; A0:       488B3551FFFFFF   MOV RSI, [RIP-175]               ; '(VALUES
>                                                               ;   (SIMPLE-ARRAY ..))
> ; A7:       488B0552FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-174]               ; '("foo")
> ; AE:       498940F0         MOV [R8-16], RAX
> ; B2:       488B054FFFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-177]               ; "(CAR \"foo\")"
> ; B9:       498940E8         MOV [R8-24], RAX
> ; BD:       49C740E017010020 MOV QWORD PTR [R8-32], #x20000117  ; NIL
> ; C5:       B90C000000       MOV ECX, 12
> ; CA:       498928           MOV [R8], RBP
> ; CD:       498BE8           MOV RBP, R8
> ; D0:       B882B12620       MOV EAX, #x2026B182              ; #<FDEFN SB-C::%COMPILE-TIME-TYPE-ERROR>
> ; D5:       FFD0             CALL RAX
> ; D7:       CC10             INT3 16                          ; Invalid argument count trap
> ; D9: L2:   6A10             PUSH 16
> ; DB:       FF1425B0080020   CALL [#x200008B0]                ; #x21A00540: LIST-ALLOC-TRAMP
> ; E2:       5A               POP RDX
> ; E3:       EB8C             JMP L0
> NIL
> * 

Okay?

>> If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing
>> and compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation
>> also does not touch C subroutines - the place where
>> typechecks are performed.
>
> SBCL implements a Lisp, Lisp by definition is
> dynamically typed.

Only for the kind of use (code) that we are used to. See this:

  https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-the-programmable-programming-language-lisp-79bb79eb068a

For example

(defunt meh5c ((int p1) (int p2))
    (+ p1 p2))
(meh5c 1 2) ; ==> 3

with defunt being a macro that uses declare.

A simple example is given earlier in the text,

(defun meh (p1)
  (declare (fixnum p1))
  (+ p1 3))

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

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On Sun, Aug 20, 2023 at 09:52:17AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> 
> > If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing
> > and compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation
> > also does not touch C subroutines - the place where
> > typechecks are performed.
> 
> So our typechecks are not optimized, as we can native compile
> Elisp but not C.
> 
> Worse, with dynamic typing they have to be used repeatedly and
> during execution /o\
> 
> Point taken - but we are compiling the C subroutines so in
> theory optimization of typechecks could happen there [...]

I humbly suggest you read up a bit on compilation. Those
type checks happen at compile time for a reason: the very
expensive data flow analysis provides the compiler with
information which is quite difficult to obtain later.

If you /know/ that some x will always be a nonnegative
integer (because every path leading to your execution
node either sets it to zero or increments it, for example),
you can do away with that test and else branch:

  (if (> x 0)
    ...
   ...)

but for that you have to take your program painstakingly
apart into basic blocks, take note of what leads to where
and think hard about which variables are munged where.

That's why modern browsers come with more than one compiler:
the price of that painstaking process is so high that you
want to start quick and dirty (and slow) and focus on those
things which really need attention.

See [1] for a discussion in Guile's context.

Cheers

[1] https://wingolog.org/archives/2020/06/03/a-baseline-compiler-for-guile

-- 
t

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 195 bytes --]

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> I humbly suggest you read up a bit on compilation. Those
> type checks happen at compile time for a reason: the very
> expensive data flow analysis provides the compiler with
> information which is quite difficult to obtain later.
> ...
> but for that you have to take your program painstakingly
> apart into basic blocks, take note of what leads to where
> and think hard about which variables are munged where.

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't we already make use of the extensive
static analysis when native-compiling Elisp? AFAIU, the main problem
with typechecks is that native-comp cannot do anything about
subroutines, where a number of repetitive typechecks are performed. So,
subroutine code cannot make use of the information provided by
native-comp static analysis performed by GCC.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

Please keep the CC intact, not everyone subscribed.

   > It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs
   > Lisp VM (or even native). Just look at this call to (car
   > "foo"), and compare what happens in Emacs.
   >
   > * (disassemble 'foo)
   > ; disassembly for FOO
   > ; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
   > ; 3F:       488B042590060020 MOV RAX, [#x20000690]
   > ; 47:       488945F8         MOV [RBP-8], RAX
   > ; 4B:       48892C2560060020 MOV [#x20000660], RBP
   > ; 53:       488B142518000020 MOV RDX, [#x20000018]
   > ; 5B:       488D4210         LEA RAX, [RDX+16]
   > ; 5F:       483B042520000020 CMP RAX, [#x20000020]
   > ; 67:       7770             JA L2
   > ; 69:       4889042518000020 MOV [#x20000018], RAX
   > ; 71: L0:   488B0570FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-144]               ; "foo"
   > ; 78:       488902           MOV [RDX], RAX
   > ; 7B:       48C7420817010020 MOV QWORD PTR [RDX+8], #x20000117  ; NIL
   > ; 83:       80CA07           OR DL, 7
   > ; 86:       48312C2560060020 XOR [#x20000660], RBP
   > ; 8E:       7402             JEQ L1
   > ; 90:       CC09             INT3 9                           ; pending interrupt trap
   > ; 92: L1:   4C8D4424F0       LEA R8, [RSP-16]
   > ; 97:       4883EC30         SUB RSP, 48
   > ; 9B:       BFAF0B1520       MOV EDI, #x20150BAF              ; 'LIST
   > ; A0:       488B3551FFFFFF   MOV RSI, [RIP-175]               ; '(VALUES
   >                                                               ;   (SIMPLE-ARRAY ..))
   > ; A7:       488B0552FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-174]               ; '("foo")
   > ; AE:       498940F0         MOV [R8-16], RAX
   > ; B2:       488B054FFFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-177]               ; "(CAR \"foo\")"
   > ; B9:       498940E8         MOV [R8-24], RAX
   > ; BD:       49C740E017010020 MOV QWORD PTR [R8-32], #x20000117  ; NIL
   > ; C5:       B90C000000       MOV ECX, 12
   > ; CA:       498928           MOV [R8], RBP
   > ; CD:       498BE8           MOV RBP, R8
   > ; D0:       B882B12620       MOV EAX, #x2026B182              ; #<FDEFN SB-C::%COMPILE-TIME-TYPE-ERROR>
   > ; D5:       FFD0             CALL RAX
   > ; D7:       CC10             INT3 16                          ; Invalid argument count trap
   > ; D9: L2:   6A10             PUSH 16
   > ; DB:       FF1425B0080020   CALL [#x200008B0]                ; #x21A00540: LIST-ALLOC-TRAMP
   > ; E2:       5A               POP RDX
   > ; E3:       EB8C             JMP L0
   > NIL
   > * 

   Okay?

I guess that you do not understand the above?  Or what?  Do you know
and understand what happens in Emacs when a similar call is done?  It
is far more than "166 bytes".

   >> If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing
   >> and compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation
   >> also does not touch C subroutines - the place where
   >> typechecks are performed.
   >
   > SBCL implements a Lisp, Lisp by definition is
   > dynamically typed.

   Only for the kind of use (code) that we are used to. See this:

     https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-the-programmable-programming-language-lisp-79bb79eb068a

This has literally nothing to do with the difference between static
typing, and dynamic typing.  The author, and you, have it completeley
backwards to the point where I need to suggest that you take sometime
to read up on basic Lisp compilers, and then look into very good Lisp
compilers (CMUCL and SBCL come to mind).  Since it is already showing
that it is very hard to even explain basic Lisp compiler behaviour
without going to fundamentals.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> Please keep the CC intact, not everyone subscribed.
>
>    > It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs
>    > Lisp VM (or even native). Just look at this call to (car
>    > "foo"), and compare what happens in Emacs.
>    >
>    > * (disassemble 'foo)
>    > ; disassembly for FOO
>    > ; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
>> ...
>    Okay?
>
> I guess that you do not understand the above?  Or what?  Do you know
> and understand what happens in Emacs when a similar call is done?  It
> is far more than "166 bytes".

It would be helpful if you show us what happens in Elisp with a similar
call. Especially after native compilation.

I am asking genuinely because `car' (1) has dedicated opt code and thus
should be one of the best-optimized function calls on Elisp side; (2)
Fcar is nothing but

/* Take the car or cdr of something whose type is not known.  */
INLINE Lisp_Object
CAR (Lisp_Object c)
{
  if (CONSP (c))
    return XCAR (c); // <- XCONS (c)->u.s.car
  if (!NILP (c))
    wrong_type_argument (Qlistp, c);
  return Qnil;
}

So, it is a very simple example that can actually explain the basic
differences between Elisp and CL. It would be nice if you (considering
your low-level understanding) can provide us with an analysis of what is
different between Elisp and CL implementations of such a simple
function.

> This has literally nothing to do with the difference between static
> typing, and dynamic typing.  The author, and you, have it completeley
> backwards ...

I am sorry, because it was my message that started the confusion.
I was mostly referring to separation between Elisp
interpreted/byte/native code and C subrs. AFAIU, static analysis info
cannot be passed between these two parts of Emacs runtime: subr cannot
know in advance what Lisp_Object type it is working on, even if static
analysis of the caller Elisp code has such information (e.g. from GCC
JIT compiler).

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 15:36:34 +0000
> 
> "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > I guess that you do not understand the above?  Or what?  Do you know
> > and understand what happens in Emacs when a similar call is done?  It
> > is far more than "166 bytes".
> 
> It would be helpful if you show us what happens in Elisp with a similar
> call.

See below.

> Especially after native compilation.

Native compilation doesn't affect 'car', because it's a primitive.

> I am asking genuinely because `car' (1) has dedicated opt code and thus
> should be one of the best-optimized function calls on Elisp side; (2)
> Fcar is nothing but
> 
> /* Take the car or cdr of something whose type is not known.  */
> INLINE Lisp_Object
> CAR (Lisp_Object c)
> {
>   if (CONSP (c))
>     return XCAR (c); // <- XCONS (c)->u.s.car
>   if (!NILP (c))
>     wrong_type_argument (Qlistp, c);
>   return Qnil;
> }

It's very easy to see the code of 'car' in Emacs.  All you need is run
GDB:

  $ gdb ./emacs
  ...
  (gdb) disassemble /m Fcar

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> It would be helpful if you show us what happens in Elisp with a similar
>> call.
>
> See below.

Sorry, I was not clear. I was asking to help comparing between
disassembly of Elisp and CL versions. I myself is not familiar with
assembly code.

> It's very easy to see the code of 'car' in Emacs.  All you need is run
> GDB:
>
>   $ gdb ./emacs
>   ...
>   (gdb) disassemble /m Fcar

So, while I can do this mechanically, it will not understand it.
Not to the level to draw conclusions about what is different in Elisp
compared to CL.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

   > Please keep the CC intact, not everyone subscribed.
   >
   >    > It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs
   >    > Lisp VM (or even native). Just look at this call to (car
   >    > "foo"), and compare what happens in Emacs.
   >    >
   >    > * (disassemble 'foo)
   >    > ; disassembly for FOO
   >    > ; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
   >> ...
   >    Okay?
   >
   > I guess that you do not understand the above?  Or what?  Do you know
   > and understand what happens in Emacs when a similar call is done?  It
   > is far more than "166 bytes".

   It would be helpful if you show us what happens in Elisp with a
   similar call. Especially after native compilation.

I'll suggest that you try to figure it out, it is a good exercise.
But the big difference is that there is much more indirection between
what SBCL does and what Emacs Lisp does.  SBCL is a much more
aggressive optimizer of code.  Emacs simply cannot optimize much of
the call _flow_.

And then you will generally either have byte compiler, or interpreted
code to handle (ignoring native compile, since must people probobly
still use the VM) -- all code in SBCL is comnpiled (EVAL is essentially
a call to the compiler, and then executed).

As an idea, I would take the Gabriel benchmarks and run them in SBCL
vs. Emacs.  Take one, and investigate what they do in detail...  You
will see that the two worlds are universes far apart.

   I am asking genuinely because `car' (1) has dedicated opt code and thus
   should be one of the best-optimized function calls on Elisp side; (2)
   Fcar is nothing but


   /* Take the car or cdr of something whose type is not known.  */
   INLINE Lisp_Object
   CAR (Lisp_Object c)
   {
     if (CONSP (c))
       return XCAR (c); // <- XCONS (c)->u.s.car
     if (!NILP (c))
       wrong_type_argument (Qlistp, c);
     return Qnil;
   }

   So, it is a very simple example that can actually explain the basic
   differences between Elisp and CL. It would be nice if you (considering
   your low-level understanding) can provide us with an analysis of what is
   different between Elisp and CL implementations of such a simple
   function.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > It's very easy to see the code of 'car' in Emacs.  All you need is run
   > GDB:
   >
   >   $ gdb ./emacs
   >   ...
   >   (gdb) disassemble /m Fcar

   So, while I can do this mechanically, it will not understand it.
   Not to the level to draw conclusions about what is different in Elisp
   compared to CL.

The issue is not Emacs Lisp vs. Common Lisp.  What you mean is what
the difference is between SBCL and GNU Emacs.'

The question can be rephrased as what is the difference between GNU
Emacs and GCC?  Why is GCC so much faster?  And if you phrase it like
that you will see that it really doesn't make much sense anymore,
since you are comparing different things.

Emacs could implement optimizaations that GCC does for C, or ADA
.. but it breaks down very quickly.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> I'll suggest that you try to figure it out, it is a good exercise.
> But the big difference is that there is much more indirection between
> what SBCL does and what Emacs Lisp does.  SBCL is a much more
> aggressive optimizer of code.  Emacs simply cannot optimize much of
> the call _flow_.

Ok. Here is what I got for Elisp `car':

Dump of assembler code for function Fcar:
Address range 0x200250 to 0x20026c:
   0x0000000000200250 <+0>:	lea    -0x3(%rdi),%eax
   0x0000000000200253 <+3>:	test   $0x7,%al
   0x0000000000200255 <+5>:	jne    0x200260 <Fcar+16>
   0x0000000000200257 <+7>:	mov    -0x3(%rdi),%rax
   0x000000000020025b <+11>:	ret
   0x000000000020025c <+12>:	nopl   0x0(%rax)
   0x0000000000200260 <+16>:	test   %rdi,%rdi
   0x0000000000200263 <+19>:	jne    0x5007d <Fcar.cold>
   0x0000000000200269 <+25>:	xor    %eax,%eax
   0x000000000020026b <+27>:	ret
Address range 0x5007d to 0x5008b:
   0x000000000005007d <-1769939>:	push   %rax
   0x000000000005007e <-1769938>:	mov    %rdi,%rsi
   0x0000000000050081 <-1769935>:	mov    $0xaf20,%edi
   0x0000000000050086 <-1769930>:	call   0x4ffc7 <wrong_type_argument>

Does not look too bad in terms of the number of instructions. And I do
not see any obvious indirection. 

> And then you will generally either have byte compiler, or interpreted
> code to handle (ignoring native compile, since must people probobly
> still use the VM) -- all code in SBCL is comnpiled (EVAL is essentially
> a call to the compiler, and then executed).

IMHO, we should not ignore native compile. If we want to improve the
peak performance of Elisp, native compile should be essential part of
it. Then, for real improvements, we should better focus on what native
compile cannot optimize.

> As an idea, I would take the Gabriel benchmarks and run them in SBCL
> vs. Emacs.  Take one, and investigate what they do in detail...  You
> will see that the two worlds are universes far apart.

Sure. That's what I asked Emanuel to do.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> The issue is not Emacs Lisp vs. Common Lisp.  What you mean is what
> the difference is between SBCL and GNU Emacs.'
>
> The question can be rephrased as what is the difference between GNU
> Emacs and GCC?  Why is GCC so much faster?  And if you phrase it like
> that you will see that it really doesn't make much sense anymore,
> since you are comparing different things.

> Emacs could implement optimizaations that GCC does for C, or ADA
> .. but it breaks down very quickly.

Not really. Native compilation already uses GCC. At least on the byte
code instructions and, separately, in subr code.
There is more than just GCC vs byte code VM in it.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Does not look too bad in terms of the number of instructions. And I do
   not see any obvious indirection. 

The Emacs VM will incure a switch to C for each call, SBCL doesn't.
You really cannot see the difference that makes?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > The issue is not Emacs Lisp vs. Common Lisp.  What you mean is what
   > the difference is between SBCL and GNU Emacs.'
   >
   > The question can be rephrased as what is the difference between GNU
   > Emacs and GCC?  Why is GCC so much faster?  And if you phrase it like
   > that you will see that it really doesn't make much sense anymore,
   > since you are comparing different things.

   > Emacs could implement optimizaations that GCC does for C, or ADA
   > .. but it breaks down very quickly.

   Not really. Native compilation already uses GCC. At least on the byte
   code instructions and, separately, in subr code.
   There is more than just GCC vs byte code VM in it.

It is not about native compilation!  It is about what OPTIMIZATIONS
can be done to the actual code flow.  Just using GCC doesn't do ANY
optimizations to how the Lisp code is optimized or how its flow is
changed due to optimizations!  

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    Does not look too bad in terms of the number of instructions. And I do
>    not see any obvious indirection. 
>
> The Emacs VM will incure a switch to C for each call, SBCL doesn't.
> You really cannot see the difference that makes?

May you elaborate what you mean by "switch to C"?
Emacs VM is running in C already.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    Not really. Native compilation already uses GCC. At least on the byte
>    code instructions and, separately, in subr code.
>    There is more than just GCC vs byte code VM in it.
>
> It is not about native compilation!  It is about what OPTIMIZATIONS
> can be done to the actual code flow.  Just using GCC doesn't do ANY
> optimizations to how the Lisp code is optimized or how its flow is
> changed due to optimizations!  

Then, what does GCC do? AFAIK, GCC JIT takes the Elisp byte code,
transforms it into JIT pseudocode, and optimizes the actual code flow.

For example, when I write

(when (> x y) (when (> x y) x))

I expect GCC JIT to throw away the duplicate comparison.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   >    Does not look too bad in terms of the number of instructions. And I do
   >    not see any obvious indirection. 
   >
   > The Emacs VM will incure a switch to C for each call, SBCL doesn't.
   > You really cannot see the difference that makes?

   May you elaborate what you mean by "switch to C"?
   Emacs VM is running in C already.

How does the decoding of bytecode to C happen?  

Please take a look at the source code, it isn't that gnarly...

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

   >    Not really. Native compilation already uses GCC. At least on the byte
   >    code instructions and, separately, in subr code.
   >    There is more than just GCC vs byte code VM in it.
   >
   > It is not about native compilation!  It is about what OPTIMIZATIONS
   > can be done to the actual code flow.  Just using GCC doesn't do ANY
   > optimizations to how the Lisp code is optimized or how its flow is
   > changed due to optimizations!  

   Then, what does GCC do? AFAIK, GCC JIT takes the Elisp byte code,
   transforms it into JIT pseudocode, and optimizes the actual code flow.

What does GCC do _WHERE_?  What backend? What language? You're
speaking in such broad terms that it makes it impossible to continue
this discussion.  I don't know how the native compilation works, but
no matter what you feed to GCC it cannot do magic and any optimization
should be done on what the Emacs compiler does.

   For example, when I write

   (when (> x y) (when (> x y) x))

   I expect GCC JIT to throw away the duplicate comparison.

Why do you expect that?  Why do you think it is duplicate?  Where are
the guarantees that > or WHEN don't have side-effects?  Do you know
the exact type of X and Y so you can skip a cascade of type checks to
pick the right comparison operator?  Can you use fixnum comparison of
a specific bit width? Do you need to use bignum comparison?  

That is the type of information SBCL knows about, or allows the user
to specify.  Emacs does not have that today, and that incures one set
of overhead.  There are plenty more...

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 14:54:43 -0400
> 
>    >    Does not look too bad in terms of the number of instructions. And I do
>    >    not see any obvious indirection. 
>    >
>    > The Emacs VM will incure a switch to C for each call, SBCL doesn't.
>    > You really cannot see the difference that makes?
> 
>    May you elaborate what you mean by "switch to C"?
>    Emacs VM is running in C already.
> 
> How does the decoding of bytecode to C happen?  

It doesn't.  bytecode.c is already written in C.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 14:54:46 -0400
> 
> 
>    "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:
> 
>    >    Not really. Native compilation already uses GCC. At least on the byte
>    >    code instructions and, separately, in subr code.
>    >    There is more than just GCC vs byte code VM in it.
>    >
>    > It is not about native compilation!  It is about what OPTIMIZATIONS
>    > can be done to the actual code flow.  Just using GCC doesn't do ANY
>    > optimizations to how the Lisp code is optimized or how its flow is
>    > changed due to optimizations!  
> 
>    Then, what does GCC do? AFAIK, GCC JIT takes the Elisp byte code,
>    transforms it into JIT pseudocode, and optimizes the actual code flow.
> 
> What does GCC do _WHERE_?  What backend? What language? You're
> speaking in such broad terms that it makes it impossible to continue
> this discussion.  I don't know how the native compilation works, but
> no matter what you feed to GCC it cannot do magic and any optimization
> should be done on what the Emacs compiler does.
> 
>    For example, when I write
> 
>    (when (> x y) (when (> x y) x))
> 
>    I expect GCC JIT to throw away the duplicate comparison.
> 
> Why do you expect that?  Why do you think it is duplicate?  Where are
> the guarantees that > or WHEN don't have side-effects?

Andrea will correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIU Ihor is correct: native
compilation in Emacs emits a kind of GIMPLE, which is then subject to
GCC optimization pass.  That's why we have the native-comp-speed
variable, which is mapped directly into the GCC's -On optimization
switches, with n = 0..3.

Maybe the SBCL compiler has better optimizations, but it is incorrect
to say that Emacs's native-compilation has none.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 15:36:34 +0000
> 
> I am asking genuinely because `car' (1) has dedicated opt code and thus
> should be one of the best-optimized function calls on Elisp side; (2)
> Fcar is nothing but
> 
> /* Take the car or cdr of something whose type is not known.  */
> INLINE Lisp_Object
> CAR (Lisp_Object c)
> {
>   if (CONSP (c))
>     return XCAR (c); // <- XCONS (c)->u.s.car
>   if (!NILP (c))
>     wrong_type_argument (Qlistp, c);
>   return Qnil;
> }

'car' does have a dedicated bytecode op-code, but that op-code simply
calls XCAR, exactly like Fcar and CAR above do:

        CASE (Bcar):
          if (CONSP (TOP))
            TOP = XCAR (TOP);
          else if (!NILP (TOP))
            wrong_type_argument (Qlistp, TOP);
          NEXT;

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    Then, what does GCC do? AFAIK, GCC JIT takes the Elisp byte code,
>    transforms it into JIT pseudocode, and optimizes the actual code flow.
>
> What does GCC do _WHERE_?  What backend? What language? You're
> speaking in such broad terms that it makes it impossible to continue
> this discussion.  I don't know how the native compilation works, but
> no matter what you feed to GCC it cannot do magic and any optimization
> should be done on what the Emacs compiler does.

Native compilation provides the necessary information about Elisp to GCC.
Otherwise, native compilation would be useless.
You may check out the details in
https://zenodo.org/record/3736363 and
https://toobnix.org/w/1f997b3c-00dc-4f7d-b2ce-74538c194fa7

>    For example, when I write
>
>    (when (> x y) (when (> x y) x))
>
>    I expect GCC JIT to throw away the duplicate comparison.
>
> Why do you expect that?  Why do you think it is duplicate?  Where are
> the guarantees that > or WHEN don't have side-effects?  Do you know
> the exact type of X and Y so you can skip a cascade of type checks to
> pick the right comparison operator?  Can you use fixnum comparison of
> a specific bit width? Do you need to use bignum comparison?  

At least some of these questions are answered by the code on Emacs side.
Native compiler transforms the Elisp byte code, using its knowledge
about function purity, types, and maybe other things, into LIMP that can
be fed to GCC JIT. Then, GCC JIT uses the provided info to do actual
optimization.

> That is the type of information SBCL knows about, or allows the user
> to specify.  Emacs does not have that today, and that incures one set
> of overhead.  There are plenty more...

AFAIK, users cannot specify type info manually, but types are tracked
when transforming Elisp byte code into LIMP representation.

The only problem (AFAIU) is that GCC JIT cannot reach inside subr level,
so all these information does not benefit Emacs functions implemented in
C.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> The only problem (AFAIU) is that GCC JIT cannot reach inside subr level,
> so all these information does not benefit Emacs functions implemented in
> C.

If I am right here, it might actually be worth it to rewrite some of the
subroutines into Elisp. For example rounding_driver (called by
`floor') code is full of runtime type checks:

  CHECK_NUMBER (n);
  if (NILP (d))
...
  CHECK_NUMBER (d);
...
  if (FIXNUMP (d))
      if (XFIXNUM (d) == 0)
...
      if (FIXNUMP (n))
...
  else if (FLOATP (d))
      if (XFLOAT_DATA (d) == 0)
  int nscale = FLOATP (n) ? double_integer_scale (XFLOAT_DATA (n)) : 0;
..

During native compilation, if type information and n and d is available,
GCC might have a chance to cut a number of branches away from the above
code.

-- 
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Org mode contributor,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> 'car' does have a dedicated bytecode op-code, but that op-code simply
> calls XCAR, exactly like Fcar and CAR above do:

Then, I conclude that the example with CL version of `car' is actually
not worse in Elisp:

>> It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs Lisp VM
>> (or even native).  Just look at this call to (car "foo"), and compare
>> what happens in Emacs.
>> 
>> * (disassemble 'foo)
>> ; disassembly for FOO
>> ; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
>> ...

In fact, the SBCL version looks more complex.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
   > Cc: incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
   > Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 14:54:43 -0400
   > 
   >    >    Does not look too bad in terms of the number of instructions. And I do
   >    >    not see any obvious indirection. 
   >    >
   >    > The Emacs VM will incure a switch to C for each call, SBCL doesn't.
   >    > You really cannot see the difference that makes?
   > 
   >    May you elaborate what you mean by "switch to C"?
   >    Emacs VM is running in C already.
   > 
   > How does the decoding of bytecode to C happen?  

   It doesn't.  bytecode.c is already written in C.

Tardy wording on my side, Emacs has to loop over the byte code to
execute it, and then maybe call C or Lisp depending.  While SBCL will
compile everything to whatever the target architecture is -- so no
bytecode is involved, and that (small) indirection is avoided since it
all becomes a normal function call.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > 'car' does have a dedicated bytecode op-code, but that op-code simply
   > calls XCAR, exactly like Fcar and CAR above do:

   Then, I conclude that the example with CL version of `car' is actually
   not worse in Elisp:

Then you conclude it wrong, you're comparing a full lambda with body
and what not.

Given the basic lack of compiler theory I'm sorta going to leave this
discussion for now.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   >    Then, what does GCC do? AFAIK, GCC JIT takes the Elisp byte code,
   >    transforms it into JIT pseudocode, and optimizes the actual code flow.
   >
   > What does GCC do _WHERE_?  What backend? What language? You're
   > speaking in such broad terms that it makes it impossible to continue
   > this discussion.  I don't know how the native compilation works, but
   > no matter what you feed to GCC it cannot do magic and any optimization
   > should be done on what the Emacs compiler does.

   Native compilation provides the necessary information about Elisp to GCC.

Native compilation provides nothing of the sort.

   Otherwise, native compilation would be useless.

Native compilation removes the indirection of going through the VM,
that is a useful step.  It also provides the JIT.

SBCL does transformation of Lisp code, there is a huge difference
there that clearly is being ignored here.

   > That is the type of information SBCL knows about, or allows the user
   > to specify.  Emacs does not have that today, and that incures one set
   > of overhead.  There are plenty more...

   AFAIK, users cannot specify type info manually, but types are tracked
   when transforming Elisp byte code into LIMP representation.

You cannot track type information in a dynamically typed language
without providing hints, something Emacs lisp does not do.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> Please keep the CC intact, not everyone subscribed.

Yes, that is some Gnus configuration "ghost" I must have done,
several people have pointed it out, but I have been unable to
locate it - so far.

>>> If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing
>>> and compilation cannot do much about it.
>>> Native compilation also does not touch C subroutines - the
>>> place where typechecks are performed.
>>
>> SBCL implements a Lisp, Lisp by definition is
>> dynamically typed.
>
> Only for the kind of use (code) that we are used to.
> See this:
>
>      https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-the-programmable-programming-language-lisp-79bb79eb068a
>
> This has literally nothing to do with the difference between
> static typing, and dynamic typing.

They are checked at compile time and with declare one can
influence execution based on that. It doesn't say subsequent
execution won't have to check types, for that one would need
complete inference like they have in SML.

That would be really nice to have BTW, are you saying that
isn't possible with Lisp? Why not?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> SBCL does transformation of Lisp code, there is a huge difference
> there that clearly is being ignored here.

May you elaborate what you mean by transformation?

>    AFAIK, users cannot specify type info manually, but types are tracked
>    when transforming Elisp byte code into LIMP representation.
>
> You cannot track type information in a dynamically typed language
> without providing hints, something Emacs lisp does not do.

https://zenodo.org/record/3736363, Section 3.4 forward data-flow
analysis.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 19:24:36 +0000
> 
> If I am right here, it might actually be worth it to rewrite some of the
> subroutines into Elisp. For example rounding_driver (called by
> `floor') code is full of runtime type checks:
> 
>   CHECK_NUMBER (n);
>   if (NILP (d))
> ...
>   CHECK_NUMBER (d);
> ...
>   if (FIXNUMP (d))
>       if (XFIXNUM (d) == 0)
> ...
>       if (FIXNUMP (n))
> ...
>   else if (FLOATP (d))
>       if (XFLOAT_DATA (d) == 0)
>   int nscale = FLOATP (n) ? double_integer_scale (XFLOAT_DATA (n)) : 0;
> ..
> 
> During native compilation, if type information and n and d is available,
> GCC might have a chance to cut a number of branches away from the above
> code.

Cut them how?  AFAICT, none of the tests above are redundant.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2023 19:44:20 +0000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > 'car' does have a dedicated bytecode op-code, but that op-code simply
> > calls XCAR, exactly like Fcar and CAR above do:
> 
> Then, I conclude that the example with CL version of `car' is actually
> not worse in Elisp:

I think you forget the price of running the interpreter.  After
computing the value of 'car', the code must use it, and that's where
the difference comes from.  Look at bytecode.c, from which I quoted a
tiny fragment, to see what Emacs does with the results of each
op-code.  (It's actually what every byte-code machine out there does.)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>>   CHECK_NUMBER (n);
>>   if (NILP (d))
>>     return FLOATP (n) ? double_to_integer (double_round (XFLOAT_DATA (n))) : n;
>> ...
>> During native compilation, if type information and n and d is available,
>> GCC might have a chance to cut a number of branches away from the above
>> code.
>
> Cut them how?  AFAICT, none of the tests above are redundant.

Consider the following:

(let ((a 10))
  (setq a (+ a 100))
  (floor a nil))

During compilation of the above code, the compiler will know that a is a
positive integer. Therefore, CHECK_NUMBER, NILP, and FLOATP are not
necessary and can be omitted in the call to `floor':

(let ((a 10))
 (setq a (+ a 100))
 a)

However, GCC JIT has no information about the internal structure of the
`floor' subr. Hence, it is currently unable to perform such
optimization.

It could, if it were somehow given an information about `floor'
implementation.

-- 
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Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> (let ((a 10))
>   (setq a (+ a 100))
>   (floor a nil))
>
> During compilation of the above code, the compiler will know that a is a
> positive integer. Therefore, CHECK_NUMBER, NILP, and FLOATP are not
> necessary and can be omitted in the call to `floor':
>
> (let ((a 10))
>  (setq a (+ a 100))
>  a)
>
> However, GCC JIT has no information about the internal structure of the
> `floor' subr. Hence, it is currently unable to perform such
> optimization.
>
> It could, if it were somehow given an information about `floor'
> implementation.

This should thus be implemented in the native compiler, without
affecting the code of Ffloor itself.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

>> However, GCC JIT has no information about the internal structure of the
>> `floor' subr. Hence, it is currently unable to perform such
>> optimization.
>>
>> It could, if it were somehow given an information about `floor'
>> implementation.
>
> This should thus be implemented in the native compiler, without
> affecting the code of Ffloor itself.

I do understand that the approach you propose is indeed used, for
example, for `car' in emit_lval_XCAR. However, is it practical for
functions like `floor'?

`car' implementation is very unlikely to change in future. But `floor'
and other functions (we should not be limited to `floor') may change
their implementations. The extra "native comp" copy of the
implementation will need to be always synchronized with the original
implementation. I doubt that it is practical maintenance-wise.

-- 
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Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> I do understand that the approach you propose is indeed used, for
> example, for `car' in emit_lval_XCAR. However, is it practical for
> functions like `floor'?
>
> `car' implementation is very unlikely to change in future.

Why not?

> But `floor' and other functions (we should not be limited to `floor')
> may change their implementations. The extra "native comp" copy of the
> implementation will need to be always synchronized with the original
> implementation. I doubt that it is practical maintenance-wise.

How and why so?  How are Fcar and Ffloor divergent in this department?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

>> `car' implementation is very unlikely to change in future.
>
> Why not?

Mostly because such basic functions are rarely changed.
Of course, it is not impossible that `car' is changed in future.

>> But `floor' and other functions (we should not be limited to `floor')
>> may change their implementations. The extra "native comp" copy of the
>> implementation will need to be always synchronized with the original
>> implementation. I doubt that it is practical maintenance-wise.
>
> How and why so?  How are Fcar and Ffloor divergent in this department?

`floor' might also be rather stable. I was mostly referring to "we
should not be limited to `floor'" - it may be a problem for other
functions.

But let me rephrase it in other terms: what you propose will require
maintaining two separate implementations of subroutines - one in C, and
one specially tailored to GCC JIT psudocode. This may be doable for a
small set of core primitives, but not scalable if we want to make more
subroutines benefit from GGC JIT optimizations.

Another idea, if rewriting in Elisp is not feasible, could be somehow
structuring the internal C code in such a way that we can derive GCC
JIT pseudocode right from the C function bodies.

For example, Ffloor could be (1) split into smaller functions dedicated
to certain argument type combinations; (2) record a metadata readable by
native comp code about which small function correspond to different
argument types. Then, native comp can emit direct calls to these smaller
(and faster) functions when the type is known.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> But let me rephrase it in other terms: what you propose will require
> maintaining two separate implementations of subroutines - one in C, and
> one specially tailored to GCC JIT psudocode. This may be doable for a
> small set of core primitives, but not scalable if we want to make more
> subroutines benefit from GGC JIT optimizations.

I'm inclined to believe that type checks within those more complex
functions do not contribute so much to the runtime of most
native-compiled functions as the small set of arithmetic primitives do.

> Another idea, if rewriting in Elisp is not feasible, could be somehow
> structuring the internal C code in such a way that we can derive GCC
> JIT pseudocode right from the C function bodies.
>
> For example, Ffloor could be (1) split into smaller functions dedicated
> to certain argument type combinations; (2) record a metadata readable by
> native comp code about which small function correspond to different
> argument types. Then, native comp can emit direct calls to these smaller
> (and faster) functions when the type is known.

That sounds like over-engineering, especially given that an actual
performance problem (in real text editing tasks) has yet to be ascribed
to Ffloor.

Can we all stop bikeshedding over this now?  By this point, the subject
of this thread bears absolutely no relation to the debate within.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > SBCL does transformation of Lisp code, there is a huge difference
   > there that clearly is being ignored here.

   May you elaborate what you mean by transformation?

Dead code eliminiation for example, the Emacs Lisp commpiler doesn't
do anything with dead code.  

   >    AFAIK, users cannot specify type info manually, but types are tracked
   >    when transforming Elisp byte code into LIMP representation.
   >
   > You cannot track type information in a dynamically typed language
   > without providing hints, something Emacs lisp does not do.

   https://zenodo.org/record/3736363, Section 3.4 forward data-flow
   analysis.

Which has nothing to do with Emacs Lisp.  Emacs Lisp lacks basic means
of instructing the compiler, for example ... stating what the function
return type is.

JIT is primarily about execution speed, not about optimizing already
existing slow code which Emacs has lots of.  For that you need a
better compiler, and people optimizing the code accordingly.

That is why SBCL is faster, since that is the only thing they do with
SBCL.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > Please keep the CC intact, not everyone subscribed.

   Yes, that is some Gnus configuration "ghost" I must have done,
   several people have pointed it out, but I have been unable to
   locate it - so far.

I suppose that is also why I get a bounce from you?

>    Hi!
>
>    This is the MAILER-DAEMON, please DO NOT REPLY to this email.
>
>    An error has occurred while attempting to deliver a message for
>    the following list of recipients:
>
> incal@dataswamp.org: "stdin: 0 messages processed in 0.001 seconds"

Adding it here, since it seems impossible to send messages to your
swamp.

   >>> If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing
   >>> and compilation cannot do much about it.
   >>> Native compilation also does not touch C subroutines - the
   >>> place where typechecks are performed.
   >>
   >> SBCL implements a Lisp, Lisp by definition is
   >> dynamically typed.
   >
   > Only for the kind of use (code) that we are used to.
   > See this:
   >
   >      https://medium.com/@MartinCracauer/static-type-checking-in-the-programmable-programming-language-lisp-79bb79eb068a
   >
   > This has literally nothing to do with the difference between
   > static typing, and dynamic typing.

   They are checked at compile time and with declare one can
   influence execution based on that. It doesn't say subsequent
   execution won't have to check types, for that one would need
   complete inference like they have in SML.

That is not the meaning of dynamically or statically typed.
Statically typed languages you know every type at compile time, in a
dynamically typed language you have no clue about it either at compile
time or run time.  The article in question claims that Lisp is
statically typed, which is a total misunderstanding of the term.

   That would be really nice to have BTW, are you saying that
   isn't possible with Lisp? Why not?

Because you literally always have to check the type, even with a
declare/declaim you are allowed to pass garbage.  The compiler can
produce a warning, but it isn't an error in Lisp, while it is an error
in a statically typed language already at compile time.  In Lisp you
never know the types of things.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    https://zenodo.org/record/3736363, Section 3.4 forward data-flow
>    analysis.
>
> Which has nothing to do with Emacs Lisp.  Emacs Lisp lacks basic means
> of instructing the compiler, for example ... stating what the function
> return type is.
>
> JIT is primarily about execution speed, not about optimizing already
> existing slow code which Emacs has lots of.  For that you need a
> better compiler, and people optimizing the code accordingly.

We are miscommunicating.
I do not agree that native compilation has nothing to do with Emacs
Lisp. src/comp.c and lisp/emacs-lisp/native.el gather the information,
among other things, about the Elisp function return types and function
code flow,  and later provide it to GCC JIT. Then, GCC JIT uses
state-of-art compiler (GCC) to optimize the instruction graph and
convert it to native code. This optimization includes removing the dead
code (AFAIR, this was one of the examples provided in the talk and paper
I linked to earlier).

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> ... In Lisp you
> never know the types of things.

This is not true.
For example, when the compiler sees (list ...) call, it is guaranteed to
return a list. The same idea can be applied to a number of other
core functions. Return type of other functions may then (in many cases)
be derived by the compiler.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > ... In Lisp you
   > never know the types of things.

   This is not true.

It is absolutley true, you cannot know what the value of a variable is
without checking the type of it at run time.  Variables have no type
information.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

If you cannot see the difference between optimizing byte code, and
optimizing Lisp code, I'll find something else to do.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    > ... In Lisp you
>    > never know the types of things.
>
>    This is not true.
>
> It is absolutley true, you cannot know what the value of a variable is
> without checking the type of it at run time.  Variables have no type
> information.

What about

(progn
  (setq x (list 'a 'b 'c))
  (listp x))

`listp' call can definitely be optimized once the compiler knows that
`list' returns a list.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

> If you cannot see the difference between optimizing byte code, and
> optimizing Lisp code, I'll find something else to do.

I am talking about the end result (native code) we achieve after
converting source Elisp into byte-code and then into native code. Not
about the byte code.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

   > If you cannot see the difference between optimizing byte code, and
   > optimizing Lisp code, I'll find something else to do.

   I am talking about the end result (native code) we achieve after
   converting source Elisp into byte-code and then into native code. Not
   about the byte code.

The end result depends on what the Emacs Lisp compiler produces,
Native compilation will not figure out that using ASSQ is better when
calling ASSOC has fixnums in it (see byte-opt.el for example of the
required Lisp wrangling that is required -- and something that SBCL
does in a much larger scale).

That is the type of optimizations that matter more than JIT.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   >    > ... In Lisp you
   >    > never know the types of things.
   >
   >    This is not true.
   >
   > It is absolutley true, you cannot know what the value of a variable is
   > without checking the type of it at run time.  Variables have no type
   > information.

   What about

   (progn
     (setq x (list 'a 'b 'c))
     (listp x))

   `listp' call can definitely be optimized once the compiler knows that
   `list' returns a list.

A sufficiently smart compiler would optimize that to T sure, the Emacs
Lisp compiler doesn't.  And that is one of the issues, native
compilation or not, since right now native compilation gets this to
work with, and it cannot do magic no matter how much magic dust you
give it.  

byte code for foo:
  args: nil
0	constant  a
1	constant  b
2	constant  c
3	list3	  
4	dup	  
5	varset	  x
6	listp	  
7	return	  

Native compilation will not help you when you need to figure out what
is to be done in:

(defun foo (x) (assoc x '((123 . a) (456 . b) (798 c))))

E.g., to call ASSQ instead, since it is just fixnums, and ASSOC uses
EQUAL which is "slow".  The Emacs Lisp compiler cannot optimize that
code today, and native compilation will get whatever the compiler
produced, with the call to ASSOC no matter what.  

That is what it means to optimize Lisp code.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gregory Heytings]

>
> But let me rephrase it in other terms: what you propose will require 
> maintaining two separate implementations of subroutines - one in C, and 
> one specially tailored to GCC JIT pseudocode.
>

Three, in fact.  'car' is defined:

- in data.c: DEFUN ("car", Fcar, ...
- in bytecode.c: CASE (Bcar): ...
- in comp.c: static gcc_jit_rvalue * emit_XCAR ... and static gcc_jit_lvalue * emit_lval_XCAR ...

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> > 'car' does have a dedicated bytecode op-code, but that op-code simply
>> > calls XCAR, exactly like Fcar and CAR above do:
>> 
>> Then, I conclude that the example with CL version of `car' is actually
>> not worse in Elisp:
>
> I think you forget the price of running the interpreter.  After
> computing the value of 'car', the code must use it, and that's where
> the difference comes from.  Look at bytecode.c, from which I quoted a
> tiny fragment, to see what Emacs does with the results of each
> op-code.  (It's actually what every byte-code machine out there does.)

Do I understand correctly that the extra staff that has to be done by
the byte-code machine is register manipulation? If so, the assembly will
probably look similar - all these extra `mov's we see in the CL version
will also be needed in Elisp to manipulate the return value of the `car'
call.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>>    I am talking about the end result (native code) we achieve after
>>    converting source Elisp into byte-code and then into native code. Not
>>    about the byte code.
>
> The end result depends on what the Emacs Lisp compiler produces,
> Native compilation will not figure out that using ASSQ is better when
> calling ASSOC has fixnums in it (see byte-opt.el for example of the
> required Lisp wrangling that is required -- and something that SBCL
> does in a much larger scale).
>
> That is the type of optimizations that matter more than JIT.

Native compilation can actually do it. And it can (AFAIU) do it more
efficiently compared to what we have in byte-opt.el, because it uses
more sophisticated data flow analysis to derive type information.

If we look into Fassoc implementation, it starts with

  if (eq_comparable_value (key) && NILP (testfn))
    return Fassq (key, alist);
...
eq_comparable_value (Lisp_Object x)
{
  return SYMBOLP (x) || FIXNUMP (x);
}

If we have a "libgccjit IR" implementation for Fassoc (see "3.8final (code
layout) in https://zenodo.org/record/3736363", the type information can
transform assoc call into assq call during compile time.

The other question is that `assoc' in particular is currently not
implemented in "libgccjit IR". But it can be added, together with other
important primitives.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 04:11:47 +0000
> 
> > Cut them how?  AFAICT, none of the tests above are redundant.
> 
> Consider the following:
> 
> (let ((a 10))
>   (setq a (+ a 100))
>   (floor a nil))
> 
> During compilation of the above code, the compiler will know that a is a
> positive integer.

It will?  What happens if a overflows?

> Therefore, CHECK_NUMBER, NILP, and FLOATP are not
> necessary and can be omitted in the call to `floor':

If you want to program in C or Fortran, then program in C or Fortran.
Lisp is an interpreted environment that traditionally includes safety
nets.  People actually complain to us, and rightfully so, when Emacs
crashes or produces corrupted results instead if signaling an error
pointing out invalid input or other run-time problems.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   >>    I am talking about the end result (native code) we achieve after
   >>    converting source Elisp into byte-code and then into native code. Not
   >>    about the byte code.
   >
   > The end result depends on what the Emacs Lisp compiler produces,
   > Native compilation will not figure out that using ASSQ is better when
   > calling ASSOC has fixnums in it (see byte-opt.el for example of the
   > required Lisp wrangling that is required -- and something that SBCL
   > does in a much larger scale).
   >
   > That is the type of optimizations that matter more than JIT.

   Native compilation can actually do it. And it can (AFAIU) do it more
   efficiently compared to what we have in byte-opt.el, because it uses
   more sophisticated data flow analysis to derive type information.

I said _figure out_ -- that is something for a human to do.  You can
put the optimization where ever you want, native compilation cannot
figure out things magically.  It is what you are essentially arguing,
that native compilation fixes every problem.  Native compilation
depends on what the Emacs compiler produces at the end of the day more
than what simple optimizations you can do.

If the Emacs compiler produces good code, which it does not do today,
then native compilation will also produce better code.  

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 08:48:55 +0000
> 
> >> Then, I conclude that the example with CL version of `car' is actually
> >> not worse in Elisp:
> >
> > I think you forget the price of running the interpreter.  After
> > computing the value of 'car', the code must use it, and that's where
> > the difference comes from.  Look at bytecode.c, from which I quoted a
> > tiny fragment, to see what Emacs does with the results of each
> > op-code.  (It's actually what every byte-code machine out there does.)
> 
> Do I understand correctly that the extra staff that has to be done by
> the byte-code machine is register manipulation?

Which registers do you have in mind here?

bytecode.c implements a stack-based machine, see the comments and
"ASCII-art" picture around line 340 in bytecode.c.  Then study the
macros used in bytecode.c, like TOP, PUSH, etc., and you will see what
I mean.

> If so, the assembly will probably look similar

I don't think so.  You can compare the GDB disassembly with the
results of byte-code disassembly (the "M-x disassemble" command in
Emacs), and I'm quite sure you will see the results are very
different.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    (progn
>      (setq x (list 'a 'b 'c))
>      (listp x))
>
>    `listp' call can definitely be optimized once the compiler knows that
>    `list' returns a list.
>
> A sufficiently smart compiler would optimize that to T sure, the Emacs
> Lisp compiler doesn't.  And that is one of the issues, native
> compilation or not, since right now native compilation gets this to
> work with, and it cannot do magic no matter how much magic dust you
> give it.  
>
> byte code for foo:
>   args: nil
> 0	constant  a
> 1	constant  b
> 2	constant  c
> 3	list3	  
> 4	dup	  
> 5	varset	  x
> 6	listp	  
> 7	return	  

AFAIK, native compilation should be able to optimize the above byte
code. At least, that's what I thought. But looking at disassembly, it
might actually be not the case.

Oh well. I am clearly missing something about how things work.

(defun test0 ()
  "Return value")

(defun test1 ()
  (let ((x (list 'a 'b 'c)))
    (when (listp x) "Return value")))

(disassemble (byte-compile #'test0))
byte code:
  doc:  Return value
  args: nil
0	constant  "Return value"
1	return	  

(native-compile #'test0 "/tmp/test0.eln")
(disassemble #'test0)
0000000000001100 <F7465737430_test0_0>:
    1100:	48 8b 05 c1 2e 00 00 	mov    0x2ec1(%rip),%rax        # 3fc8 <d_reloc@@Base-0x218>
    1107:	48 8b 00             	mov    (%rax),%rax
    110a:	c3                   	ret
    110b:	0f 1f 44 00 00       	nopl   0x0(%rax,%rax,1)

Now, test1

(disassemble (byte-compile #'test1))
byte code:
  args: nil
0	constant  a
1	constant  b
2	constant  c
3	list3	  
4	dup	  
5	varbind	  x
6	listp	  
7	goto-if-nil-else-pop 1
10	constant  "Return value"
11:1	unbind	  1
12	return	  

(native-compile #'test1 "/tmp/test1.eln")
(disassemble #'test1)
0000000000001100 <F7465737431_test1_0>:
    1100:	48 8b 05 c9 2e 00 00 	mov    0x2ec9(%rip),%rax        # 3fd0 <freloc_link_table@@Base-0x268>
    1107:	41 54                	push   %r12
    1109:	31 f6                	xor    %esi,%esi
    110b:	55                   	push   %rbp
    110c:	4c 8b 25 b5 2e 00 00 	mov    0x2eb5(%rip),%r12        # 3fc8 <d_reloc@@Base-0x218>
    1113:	53                   	push   %rbx
    1114:	48 8b 18             	mov    (%rax),%rbx
    1117:	49 8b 7c 24 10       	mov    0x10(%r12),%rdi
    111c:	ff 93 d0 20 00 00    	call   *0x20d0(%rbx)
    1122:	49 8b 7c 24 08       	mov    0x8(%r12),%rdi
    1127:	48 89 c6             	mov    %rax,%rsi
    112a:	ff 93 d0 20 00 00    	call   *0x20d0(%rbx)
    1130:	49 8b 3c 24          	mov    (%r12),%rdi
    1134:	48 89 c6             	mov    %rax,%rsi
    1137:	ff 93 d0 20 00 00    	call   *0x20d0(%rbx)
    113d:	49 8b 7c 24 20       	mov    0x20(%r12),%rdi
    1142:	48 89 c5             	mov    %rax,%rbp
    1145:	48 89 c6             	mov    %rax,%rsi
    1148:	ff 53 58             	call   *0x58(%rbx)
    114b:	48 89 ef             	mov    %rbp,%rdi
    114e:	ff 93 30 29 00 00    	call   *0x2930(%rbx)
    1154:	48 85 c0             	test   %rax,%rax
    1157:	74 17                	je     1170 <F7465737431_test1_0+0x70>
    1159:	49 8b 6c 24 30       	mov    0x30(%r12),%rbp
    115e:	bf 06 00 00 00       	mov    $0x6,%edi
    1163:	ff 53 28             	call   *0x28(%rbx)
    1166:	5b                   	pop    %rbx
    1167:	48 89 e8             	mov    %rbp,%rax
    116a:	5d                   	pop    %rbp
    116b:	41 5c                	pop    %r12
    116d:	c3                   	ret
    116e:	66 90                	xchg   %ax,%ax
    1170:	48 89 c5             	mov    %rax,%rbp
    1173:	bf 06 00 00 00       	mov    $0x6,%edi
    1178:	ff 53 28             	call   *0x28(%rbx)
    117b:	48 89 e8             	mov    %rbp,%rax
    117e:	5b                   	pop    %rbx
    117f:	5d                   	pop    %rbp
    1180:	41 5c                	pop    %r12
    1182:	c3                   	ret
    1183:	66 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 	data16 cs nopw 0x0(%rax,%rax,1)
    118a:	00 00 00 00 
    118e:	66 90                	xchg   %ax,%ax


-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> (let ((a 10))
>>   (setq a (+ a 100))
>>   (floor a nil))
>> 
>> During compilation of the above code, the compiler will know that a is a
>> positive integer.
>
> It will?  What happens if a overflows?

It will not, right? Because we do know all the values at compile time in
the above example. I am not sure if we can as far as checking the value
range at compile time, but it is at least theoretically possible.

>> Therefore, CHECK_NUMBER, NILP, and FLOATP are not
>> necessary and can be omitted in the call to `floor':
>
> If you want to program in C or Fortran, then program in C or Fortran.
> Lisp is an interpreted environment that traditionally includes safety
> nets.  People actually complain to us, and rightfully so, when Emacs
> crashes or produces corrupted results instead if signaling an error
> pointing out invalid input or other run-time problems.

I did not mean to disable checks. I just meant that when the types and
possibly value ranges are known at compile time, these checks can be
safely omitted. Without compromising safety.

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> If so, the assembly will probably look similar
>
> I don't think so.  You can compare the GDB disassembly with the
> results of byte-code disassembly (the "M-x disassemble" command in
> Emacs), and I'm quite sure you will see the results are very
> different.

May you show how to get this GDB disassembly for a toy function?

-- 
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 11:56:20 +0000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> (let ((a 10))
> >>   (setq a (+ a 100))
> >>   (floor a nil))
> >> 
> >> During compilation of the above code, the compiler will know that a is a
> >> positive integer.
> >
> > It will?  What happens if a overflows?
> 
> It will not, right? Because we do know all the values at compile time in
> the above example.

In toy programs, perhaps.  But not in real life.  We want to be able
to write real-life programs in Lisp, not just toy ones.

> > If you want to program in C or Fortran, then program in C or Fortran.
> > Lisp is an interpreted environment that traditionally includes safety
> > nets.  People actually complain to us, and rightfully so, when Emacs
> > crashes or produces corrupted results instead if signaling an error
> > pointing out invalid input or other run-time problems.
> 
> I did not mean to disable checks. I just meant that when the types and
> possibly value ranges are known at compile time, these checks can be
> safely omitted. Without compromising safety.

Not in ELisp, they cannot.  Someone already explained why.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net>
> Cc: ams@gnu.org, incal@dataswamp.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 11:59:42 +0000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> If so, the assembly will probably look similar
> >
> > I don't think so.  You can compare the GDB disassembly with the
> > results of byte-code disassembly (the "M-x disassemble" command in
> > Emacs), and I'm quite sure you will see the results are very
> > different.
> 
> May you show how to get this GDB disassembly for a toy function?

You already did that, at least twice, in this discussion.  So what
should I show you that you don't already know?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

>>> Please keep the CC intact, not everyone subscribed.
>>
>> Yes, that is some Gnus configuration "ghost" I must have
>> done, several people have pointed it out, but I have been
>> unable to locate it - so far.
>
> I suppose that is also why I get a bounce from you?

No, that is something else, and only happens on MLs.

In ~/.fdm.conf I have a line like this

  match case "emacs-devel@gnu.org" in headers action "drop"

I put it there since I read those messages with Gnus and
Gmane, thus can dispose of the e-mails copies saying the same
thing - maybe that is what is causing the failure delivery
messages. Let's comment it out then and see if it helps.

> That is not the meaning of dynamically or statically typed.
> Statically typed languages you know every type at compile
> time, in a dynamically typed language you have no clue about
> it either at compile time or run time. The article in
> question claims that Lisp is statically typed, which is
> a total misunderstanding of the term.
>
>> That would be really nice to have BTW, are you saying that
>> isn't possible with Lisp? Why not?
>
> Because you literally always have to check the type, even
> with a declare/declaim you are allowed to pass garbage.
> The compiler can produce a warning, but it isn't an error in
> Lisp, while it is an error in a statically typed language
> already at compile time. In Lisp you never know the types
> of things.

In C types are explicit in the source and in SML the types of
everything, including functions and by extention combinations
of functions, can be inferred, so that the type of a function
to add two integers is described as a mapping from integer,
integer to another integer.

Those methods cannot be used to get a statically typed Lisp?
Why not? Because of the Lisp syntax?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Those methods cannot be used to get a statically typed Lisp?
   Why not? Because of the Lisp syntax?

(let ((x 123)
  (setq x "foo")
  (setq x current-buffer))

You cannot disallow the above, or prohibit it -- you'd get a entierly
different language that isn't Lisp.  You can tell the compiler that
"yes, I promise that X is a fixnum", but in a statically typed error
that is an hard errror. 

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> May you show how to get this GDB disassembly for a toy function?
>
> You already did that, at least twice, in this discussion.  So what
> should I show you that you don't already know?

You are right. I indeed figured out how to disassemble native-compiled
function right from Emacs.

For some reason, I was thinking about disassembly of a byte-compiled
function. But it obviously does not make sense.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

>> Those methods cannot be used to get a statically typed
>> Lisp? Why not? Because of the Lisp syntax?
>
> (let ((x 123)
>   (setq x "foo")
>   (setq x current-buffer))
>
> You cannot disallow the above, or prohibit it -- you'd get
> a entierly different language that isn't Lisp.

It would be different, but I don't know if it would be
entirely different necessarily. It would be interesting to
try anyway.

But anyway, commenting out that ~/.fdm.conf instruction do
drop mails from my INBOX that also appear as posts on Gmane,
I now received this mail as a mail copy as well as on Gmane,
from where I type this. Did you still get the non-delivery
e-mail? If not, at least one mystery less to solve.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> While SBCL will compile everything to whatever the target
> architecture is -- so no bytecode is involved, and that
> (small) indirection is avoided since it all becomes a normal
> function call.

This sounds like a good explanation since it is a general
explanation on the level of different models, not individual
optimizations implemented explicitely for certain algorithms
like we saw with the Elisp vs CL versions of Fibonacci.

Bytecode is slower since more instructions are carried out
compared to no bytecode and only machine instructions to do
the job.

And if the advantage with virtual machines and bytecode is
portability, it brings us back to the initial "SBCL isn't
portable" at the other end of the spectrum.

Is native compilation of Elisp not fully able to bridge
that gap?

PS. I agree native compilation should be encouraged for
    everyone, as it makes the interactive feel of Emacs much
    faster. This includes general use, so it isn't just
    a matter of executing heavy computation if anyone was
    under that impression - but that is faster as well,
    of course.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

> But anyway, commenting out that ~/.fdm.conf instruction do
> drop mails from my INBOX that also appear as posts on Gmane,
> I now received this mail as a mail copy as well as on Gmane,
> from where I type this. Did you still get the non-delivery
> e-mail? If not, at least one mystery less to solve.

Yes, for completion, it was these lines in ~/.fdm.conf that
caused the error, so instead of dropping the mails like I did
I should probably pipe them to some directory where I don't
see them.

Don't try this at home!

# MLs
match case "debian-user@lists.debian.org" in headers action "drop"
match case "emacs-devel@gnu.org"          in headers action "drop"
match case "emacs-tangents@gnu.org"       in headers action "drop"
match case "gmane-test@quimby.gnus.org"   in headers action "drop"
match case "help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org"       in headers action "drop"

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

All else being equal, it is useful to speed up Emacs Lisp execution,
but that should not take priority over other desirable goals.

Bytecode has many advantages for Emacs.  It is portable, it is simple,
it is fast to generate, and it doesn't break.

For most purposes, this is more important than execution speed.  Most
Emacs commands' speed is limited in practice by the speed of the
user's typing.  The few exceptions, in my usage, are limited by
the speed of searching large buffers.



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2023 22:01:59 -0400
> 
> Most Emacs commands' speed is limited in practice by the speed of
> the user's typing.  The few exceptions, in my usage, are limited by
> the speed of searching large buffers.

The above is correct, but is nowadays incomplete.  Here are some
relevant observations:

 . There are quite a few Lisp programs that run off post-command-hook
   or by timers.  Those can slow down Emacs even while the user types,
   and even though the commands invoked by the actual keys the user
   types are themselves fast.
 . Searching large buffers is quite fast, but processing on top of
   that might not be.  There are nowadays many features that work via
   various hooks and Lisp invocations from C (example: syntax search
   and analysis), and those can completely shadow the (usually small)
   cost of searching itself.
 . Some commands, such as byte-compile etc., perform significant
   processing in Lisp that can be slow.  Some features, such as shr.el
   (which is used in commands that render HTML) also perform
   significant processing in Lisp.

For these and other reasons, an Emacs with native-compilation feels
tangibly faster than Emacs without native-compilation, and IMO that
justifies the known downsides: the fact that native compilation is
slower than byte compilation, and the compiled files are non-portable.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> Most Emacs commands' speed is limited in practice by the
>> speed of the user's typing. The few exceptions, in my
>> usage, are limited by the speed of searching large buffers.
>
> [...] For these and other reasons, an Emacs with
> native-compilation feels tangibly faster than Emacs without
> native-compilation

Absolutely, huge number-crunching computing will be faster,
but also everyday life inside Emacs, you notice
this immediately.

So people should not be afraid, they should be encouraged to
try it.

If the popup buffers with tons of warnings and one-the-fly
nature of the compilation itself a factor that might scare
people away, we should work against that as well. For example
all [M]ELPA package maintainer should be encouraged to clean
their code and get away the warnings, to not take them
lightly.

And maybe add an option to not have native compilation popup
buffers at all, so it would be completely silent.

> and IMO that justifies the known downsides: the fact that
> native compilation is slower than byte compilation

But stuff that happens only once doesn't have to be fast.
And one can think of a scenario where all Elisp is natively
compiled once and for all, like I did here:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/native.el

This will populate the eln-cache with some stuff that in
practice is never used for a particular user, since no single
individual uses all of Emacs, but my record is still just 1549
files so searching the cache should still be fast.

> and the compiled files are non-portable

The files are not but the feature is so unless one runs some
really exotic processor one can still grab the Elisp files and
native compile them on the local machine.

BTW aren't the eln files portable for use within the same
architecture family? But even if they are, I don't see why
anyone would use (share) them like that when native
compilation is so easy to do locally.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2023 20:15:54 +0200
> 
> BTW aren't the eln files portable for use within the same
> architecture family?

Only if you are very lucky.  In general, no.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Po Lu wrote:

> I'm inclined to believe that type checks within those more
> complex functions do not contribute so much to the runtime
> of most native-compiled functions as the small set of
> arithmetic primitives do.

Very much so, one should focus on the small ones, that way the
big one will be faster as well.

The set of arithmetic primitives sounds like a good idea to
cover first.

But apart from them a primitive function is a function written
in C, but callable from Lisp, AKA what the help calls
a built-in function. So there are quite a lot of those!

One can test for primitive functions like this:

  (subrp (symbol-function #'+)) ; t

(info "(elisp) Primitive Function Type")
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Primitive-Function-Type.html

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Native compilation doesn't affect 'car', because it's
> a primitive.

How fast is our C? We need to optimize that as well? And isn't
it already compiled for the native architecture?

> It's very easy to see the code of 'car' in Emacs. All you
> need is run GDB:
>
>   $ gdb ./emacs
>   ...
>   (gdb) disassemble /m Fcar

Or do `C-h f car RET TAB RET' to follow the hyperlink to data.c.

It takes you to Fcar at line 614. Fcar however is only in C,
so not a primitive then.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

>> For example, when I write
>>
>> (when (> x y) (when (> x y) x))
>>
>> I expect GCC JIT to throw away the duplicate comparison.
>
> Why do you expect that? Why do you think it is duplicate?
> Where are the guarantees that > or WHEN don't have
> side-effects? Do you know the exact type of X and Y so you
> can skip a cascade of type checks to pick the right
> comparison operator? Can you use fixnum comparison of
> a specific bit width? Do you need to use bignum comparison?
>
> That is the type of information SBCL knows about, or allows
> the user to specify. Emacs does not have that today [...]

Why can SBCL answer those questions based on the sample code,
and not Emacs? What is it that they have, and we don't?
And why can't we have it as well?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Andrea will correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIU Ihor is
> correct: native compilation in Emacs emits a kind of GIMPLE,
> which is then subject to GCC optimization pass. That's why
> we have the native-comp-speed variable, which is mapped
> directly into the GCC's -On optimization switches, with n =
> 0..3.

The docstring for `native-comp-speed'.

Optimization level for native compilation, a number between -1 and 3.
 -1 functions are kept in bytecode form and no native compilation is performed
    (but *.eln files are still produced, and include the compiled code in
    bytecode form).
  0 native compilation is performed with no optimizations.
  1 light optimizations.
  2 max optimization level fully adherent to the language semantic.
  3 max optimization level, to be used only when necessary.
    Warning: with 3, the compiler is free to perform dangerous optimizations.

I have that 2, which is the default value. Maybe I should try
3 and see if something breaks. I wonder what those dangerous
optimizations are?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

> AFAIK, users cannot specify type info manually, but types
> are tracked when transforming Elisp byte code into
> LIMP representation.

What is LIMP?

> The only problem (AFAIU) is that GCC JIT cannot reach inside
> subr level, so all these information does not benefit Emacs
> functions implemented in C.

But surely that code is fast enough?

Well, I guess optimally one would want to optimize everything
including Emacs' C.

Or do you mean it obstructs the optimization of our Elisp
as well?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

> For example, Ffloor could be (1) split into smaller
> functions dedicated to certain argument type combinations;
> (2) record a metadata readable by native comp code about
> which small function correspond to different argument types.
> Then, native comp can emit direct calls to these smaller
> (and faster) functions when the type is known.

Yes, value-type inference in Elisp and then several functions
in C - based on type - to do the same thing.

Sounds like a good strategy, assuming type checks in C are
actually what makes Elisp slow.

I have now native compiled my Elisp with `native-comp-speed'
set to 3. It is about 100 files, but they require a lot of
other files so all in all located in eln-cache after this step
were just below 500 files. (BTW, what are the .tmp files in
said directory?)

I don't know about you guys but the intuition regarding
interactive feel is that it is _very_ fast!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

> I have now native compiled my Elisp with `native-comp-speed'
> set to 3.

Okay, bad idea!

The computer got unresponsive.

Don't try this at home either, then.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> Ihor Radchenko wrote:
>
>> AFAIK, users cannot specify type info manually, but types
>> are tracked when transforming Elisp byte code into
>> LIMP representation.
>
> What is LIMP?

AFAIU, native compilation code transforms Elisp into intermediate
representation called LIMPLE. I recommend reading
https://zenodo.org/record/3736363 where the native compilation process
is described in details. Because my own understanding is limited and I
may use terms not accurately.

>> The only problem (AFAIU) is that GCC JIT cannot reach inside
>> subr level, so all these information does not benefit Emacs
>> functions implemented in C.
>
> But surely that code is fast enough?

It is fast, but it could be faster if native compilation could cut off
some code branches inside the C code.

> Well, I guess optimally one would want to optimize everything
> including Emacs' C.
>
> Or do you mean it obstructs the optimization of our Elisp
> as well?

Let me demonstrate what I mean by example.

Consider a simple Elisp like

(let ((foo '(a b c))) (length foo))

`length' is defined in C like:

  EMACS_INT val;

  if (STRINGP (sequence))
    val = SCHARS (sequence);
....
  else if (CONSP (sequence))
    val = list_length (sequence);
....
  else
    wrong_type_argument (Qsequencep, sequence);

  return make_fixnum (val);

In theory, if we had full information, we could just optimize the
initial Elisp to

make_fixnum (list_length('(a b c)))

or even to just

3

as '(a b c) value is known at compile time.

However, despite knowing that the value of foo is a list constant at
compile time, native compilation code has no access to the
implementation details of `length' - it is a black box for native
compiler. So, we cannot perform the above optimization.

The workaround that is currently used is using special compile-time
expander for select C functions (like for `+' - `define_add1_sub1')
However, as we discussed earlier, this leads to multiple implementations
of the same function and makes maintenance more difficult.
So, only some very important C functions can be expanded like this.
For now, AFAIU, only `+' and `-' have native compiler expansion defined.
Other expansions are yet to be implemented.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

>>   $ gdb ./emacs
>>   ...
>>   (gdb) disassemble /m Fcar
>
> Or do `C-h f car RET TAB RET' to follow the hyperlink to data.c.
>
> It takes you to Fcar at line 614. Fcar however is only in C,
> so not a primitive then.

It is a Elisp primitive. Please check out Elisp manual:

2.4.15 Primitive Function Type
------------------------------

A “primitive function” is a function callable from Lisp but written in
the C programming language.  Primitive functions are also called “subrs”
or “built-in functions”.  (The word “subr” is derived from
“subroutine”.) 

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

>> That is the type of information SBCL knows about, or allows
>> the user to specify. Emacs does not have that today [...]
>
> Why can SBCL answer those questions based on the sample code,
> and not Emacs? What is it that they have, and we don't?
> And why can't we have it as well?

SBCL has a lot more written using low-level CL code. Which makes all the
type inference and other optimizations available to the compiler.
However, SBCL _interpreter_ is much slower compared to Emacs'.

AFAIU, the reason Emacs interpreter is faster is that the most important
performance-critical primitives are written directly in C. However, for
the same reason, native compilation in Emacs cannot optimize the code as
much. It is a trade off.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

>> Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2023 21:19:11 -0400
>> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>:
>> > "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes:
>> > 
>> > > When I first worked on Emacs code in the 1980s Lisp was already fast
>> > > enough, and machine speeds have gone up by something like 10^3 since.
>> > > I plain don't believe the "slower" part can be an issue on modern
>> > > hardware, not even on tiny SBCs.
>> > 
>> > Can you promise the same, if your changes are not restricted to one or
>> > two functions in fileio.c, but instead pervade throughout C source?
>> 
>> Yes, in fact, I can. Because if by some miracle we were able to
>> instantly rewrite the entirety of Emacs in Python (which I'm not
>> advocating, I chose it because it's the slowest of the major modern
>> scripting languages) basic considerations of clocks per second would
>> predict it to run a *dead minimum* of two orders of magnitude faster
>> than the Emacs of, say, 1990.
>> 
>> And 1990 Emacs was already way fast enough for the human eye and
>> brain, which can't even register interface lag of less than 0.17
>> seconds (look up the story of Jef Raskin and how he exploited this
>> psychophysical fact in the design of the Canon Cat sometime; it's very
>> instructive). The human auditory system can perceive finer timeslices,
>> down to about 0.02s in skilled musicians, but we're not using elisp
>> for audio signal processing.
> 
> This kind of argument is inherently flawed: it's true that today's
> machines are much faster than those in, say, 1990, but Emacs nowadays
> demands much more horsepower from the CPU than it did back then.
> What's more, Emacs is still a single-threaded Lisp machine, although
> in the last 10 years CPU power develops more and more in the direction
> of multiple cores and execution units, with single execution units
> being basically as fast (or as slow) today as they were a decade ago.
> 
> And if these theoretical arguments don't convince you, then there are
> facts: the Emacs display engine, for example, was completely rewritten
> since the 1990s, and is significantly more expensive than the old one
> (because it lifts several of the gravest limitations of the old
> redisplay).  Similarly with some other core parts and internals.
> 
> We are trying to make Lisp programs faster all the time, precisely
> because users do complain about annoying delays and slowness.  Various
> optimizations in the byte-compiler and the whole native-compilation
> feature are parts of this effort, and are another evidence that the
> performance concerns are not illusory in Emacs.  And we are still not
> there yet: people still do complain from time to time, and not always
> because someone selected a sub-optimal algorithm where better ones
> exist.
> 
> The slowdown caused by moving one primitive to Lisp might be
> insignificant, but these slowdowns add up and eventually do show in
> user-experience reports.  Rewriting code in Lisp also increases the GC
> pressure, and GC cycles are known as one of the significant causes of
> slow performance in quite a few cases.  We are currently tracking the
> GC performance (see the emacs-gc-stats@gnu.org mailing list) for that
> reason, in the hope that we can modify GC and/or its thresholds to
> improve performance.
> 
>> If you take away nothing else from this conversation, at least get it
>> through your head that "more Lisp might make Emacs too slow" is a
>> deeply, *deeply* silly idea. It's 2023 and the only ways you can make
>> a user-facing program slow enough for response lag to be noticeable
>> are disk latency on spinning rust, network round-trips, or operations
>> with a superlinear big-O in critical paths.  Mere interpretive overhead
>> won't do it.
> 
> We found this conclusion to be false in practice, at least in Emacs
> practice.
> 
>> > Finally, you haven't addressed the remainder of the reasons I itemized.
>> 
>> They were too obvious, describing problems that competent software
>> engineers know how to prevent or hedge against, and you addressed me
>> as though I were a n00b that just fell off a cabbage truck. My
>> earliest contributions to Emacs were done so long ago that they
>> predated the systematic Changelog convention; have you heard the
>> expression "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs"?  My patience for
>> that sort of thing is limited.
> 
> Please be more patient, and please consider what others here say to be
> mostly in good-faith and based on non-trivial experience.  If
> something in what others here say sounds like an offense to your
> intelligence, it is most probably a misunderstanding: for most people
> here English is not their first language, so don't expect them to
> always be able to find the best words to express what they want to
> say.

Very interesting discussion going on for a long time.

I think you are all correct, and wrong to an extent, but I believe that
nobody has touched the fundamental issue: emacs design is flawed beyond
repair for todays machines. Not necessarily in pejorative meaning, but
to repair Emacs you would have to significantly rework internals, to the
point of entire design rewrite. Emacs is a child of its time (like
everything else). It was designed for the time of single-core slow
machine, and its design makes sense in that perspective. However, for
todays multicore machines, the fact that a lisp machine is slapped on
top of an existing text editor (Gosslings I guess), and everything is
shared via global state, can't be addressed in any other way but to
rewrite Emacs core from ground up. No amount of patch slapping onto the
current design can compensate for the lack of appropriate desing.

RMS has one abandoned TECO design to adapt Emacs to new times; perhaps
the time has come to do it again.

Sure, you can rework the C core completely, and implement better GC,
threads, and what not, but it seems signficant less work to re-implement
Emacs in a language that already has proper infrastructure in the place,
such as Common Lisp on ccl/sbcl, instead of duplicating all the work.

I understand machines of the time were to slow for a language as big as
Common Lisp when Emacs switched from TECO to C, but today the situation
is different. I am quite sure that sbcl would offer enough speed for a
text editor implementation. As you all have already noticed, speed is
limited by a human factor anyway.

We also see many projects that are duplicating Emacs idea, and with all
right; the ideas of Emacs are indeed sound and very good. But it is a
shame to abandon 40 years of development and the community that Emacs
has, something other projects can't compete with. Emacs Lisp is de
facto, *the* best documented Lisp out there, and Emacs is one of the
best documented open source projects available, kudos for that to
everyone involved. It would be a pittiful waste to just throw away all
that documentation and work done, as well as the vivid community that
Emacs has. In my personal opinon, those are *the* qualities of Emacs as
a project.

I personally believe that Emacs as a project would benefit of complete
core rewrite, as well as unifying the extension and the implementation
language for several reasons. Yes, it is a lot of work, but even
rewriting C core to adapt Emacs to modern machines is a lot of work in
itself, if it is even possible. You can either let it be, and slowly but
surely see Emacs usage decline, or you can rewrite Emacs core (again) to
better suit modern multicore machines.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
> Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2023 17:14:41 +0200
> 
> I personally believe that Emacs as a project would benefit of complete
> core rewrite, as well as unifying the extension and the implementation
> language for several reasons. Yes, it is a lot of work, but even
> rewriting C core to adapt Emacs to modern machines is a lot of work in
> itself, if it is even possible.

Sure, this has been said here several times.

Two problems with this:

  . we need volunteer(s) to actually do the work, and the requirements
    for their talents are hard to meet; and
  . the rewrite needs to keep all or most of Lisp still working, which
    is IMNSHO almost impossible, because our Lisp is written for the
    current design

I leave the conclusions as an exercise ;-)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > It was designed for the time of single-core slow
  > machine, and its design makes sense in that perspective. 

That is true.

                                                             However, for
  > todays multicore machines, the fact that a lisp machine is slapped on
  > top of an existing text editor (Gosslings I guess),

No, that's not how I developed it.

I first wrote Emacs Lisp as a standalone Lisp interpreter.
Then I wrote the code to handle buffers and editing the text in them.

Turning to the question of future development,
I think the design of Emacs is good enough,
To rewrite Emacs completely would be an enormous misdirected effort.

GNU Emacs is a part of the GNU opersating system,
whose goal is to provide, in the Free World, all the features
that people want.

With the same work it would take to rewrite Emacs from scratch,
we could write some other complex and powerful free program
which does some other job -- a job that there is no free software to do.

Or we could add features -- to Emacs or some other free program -- which
would greatly extend what people can do in the Free World.

Consider, for instance, the idea of extending a free spell checking
program so it could tell you the gender of each noun if you ask.
Going beyond that, maybe it could check for agreement of modifiers
with their nouns.  That would be a big help for writing in many
Indo-European languages and Semitic languages.  Perhaps also other
languages which have something grammatically like gender but not
based on gender of humans.

That would be a tiny fraction of the work that people are proposing
here.  And it would help a lot of users.

Would someone like to do it?


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Very interesting discussion going on for a long time.
>
> I think you are all correct, and wrong to an extent, but I believe that
> nobody has touched the fundamental issue: emacs design is flawed beyond
> repair for todays machines. Not necessarily in pejorative meaning, but
> to repair Emacs you would have to significantly rework internals, to the
> point of entire design rewrite. Emacs is a child of its time (like
> everything else). It was designed for the time of single-core slow
> machine, and its design makes sense in that perspective. However, for
> todays multicore machines, the fact that a lisp machine is slapped on
> top of an existing text editor (Gosslings I guess), and everything is
> shared via global state, can't be addressed in any other way but to
> rewrite Emacs core from ground up. No amount of patch slapping onto the
> current design can compensate for the lack of appropriate desing.

Unix was designed for 16-bit uniprocessor machines, where the only form
of ``interlocking'' was:

   int x = spltty ();
   splx (x);

But today, both free BSD Unix and proprietary Unix scale to SMPs with
hundereds of processors, exploiting intricate interlocking around
individual kernel data structures.  The perfect antithesis to your
standpoint...

Re: Shrinking the C core

[chad]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1303 bytes --]

On Sun, Aug 27, 2023 at 9:42 PM Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:

> But today, both free BSD Unix and proprietary Unix scale to SMPs with
> hundereds of processors, exploiting intricate interlocking around
> individual kernel data structures.  The perfect antithesis to your
> standpoint...
>

An old friend of mine did this work for NetBSD as his master's thesis at
MIT. Rebuilding an emacs would, at a very rough estimate, be no more work,
likely less. He had the benefit of being aware of other attempts to add SMP
support to other unixen, though.

One major problem with building a truly multi-core-optimized Emacs is that
so much of the core concepts revolve around shared state, especially
buffers. I *think* there's a workable design similar to a modern web
browser with moderate-to-high sandboxing and worker threads, but someone
would have to care enough about each of Emacs, modern browser
implementation (including javascript and sandboxing), and language
implementation to puzzle out the details. I don't know of such a person
(but it would be a bit surprising if I did!), and I don't have the same
sort of contact with grad students anymore. My hope is that there's still a
window for such a person, and they haven't all been swallowed up by VSCode
and co-pilot.

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Po Lu wrote:

> Unix was designed for 16-bit uniprocessor machines, where
> the only form of ``interlocking'' was:
>
>    int x = spltty ();
>    splx (x);
>
> But today, both free BSD Unix and proprietary Unix

BSD and proprietary Unix, what about Linux?

> scale to SMPs with hundereds of processors, exploiting
> intricate interlocking around individual kernel
> data structures.

I agree with those who say rewriting Emacs to get SMP would be
to burn down the house to kill the rats, but is that the only
way to get SMP?

Cannot the "single-thread Lisp machine" instead be modified
and extended from its current implementation, so that it would
support SMP?

If that is the future of computing, I think there is no
staying in the past, so it is rather a question of how to get
it in the best way possible.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>> The only problem (AFAIU) is that GCC JIT cannot reach
>> inside subr level, so all these information does not
>> benefit Emacs functions implemented in C.
>
> If I am right here, it might actually be worth it to rewrite
> some of the subroutines into Elisp. For example
> rounding_driver (called by `floor') code is full of runtime
> type checks:
>
>   CHECK_NUMBER (n);
>   if (NILP (d))
> ...
>   CHECK_NUMBER (d);
> ...
>   if (FIXNUMP (d))
>       if (XFIXNUM (d) == 0)
> ...
>       if (FIXNUMP (n))
> ...
>   else if (FLOATP (d))
>       if (XFLOAT_DATA (d) == 0)
>   int nscale = FLOATP (n) ? double_integer_scale (XFLOAT_DATA (n)) : 0;
> ..
>
> During native compilation, if type information and n and
> d is available, GCC might have a chance to cut a number of
> branches away from the above code.

Does this indicate a tendency where one can foresee a future
where Elisp is as fast as C to the point C could be
dropped completely?

Even today we can run singular Elisp programs. But not without
Emacs and its Lisp interpreter, which is written in C.

Still, I wonder if those typechecks in C really slow things
down to the point it matters. Maybe for really huge
number-crunching computations?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> Very interesting discussion going on for a long time.
>>
>> I think you are all correct, and wrong to an extent, but I believe that
>> nobody has touched the fundamental issue: emacs design is flawed beyond
>> repair for todays machines. Not necessarily in pejorative meaning, but
>> to repair Emacs you would have to significantly rework internals, to the
>> point of entire design rewrite. Emacs is a child of its time (like
>> everything else). It was designed for the time of single-core slow
>> machine, and its design makes sense in that perspective. However, for
>> todays multicore machines, the fact that a lisp machine is slapped on
>> top of an existing text editor (Gosslings I guess), and everything is
>> shared via global state, can't be addressed in any other way but to
>> rewrite Emacs core from ground up. No amount of patch slapping onto the
>> current design can compensate for the lack of appropriate desing.
>
> Unix was designed for 16-bit uniprocessor machines, where the only form
> of ``interlocking'' was:
>
>    int x = spltty ();
>    splx (x);
>
> But today, both free BSD Unix and proprietary Unix scale to SMPs with
> hundereds of processors, exploiting intricate interlocking around
> individual kernel data structures.  The perfect antithesis to your
> standpoint...

In which way is it "the perfect antithesis" to my standpoint, and what
is my standpoint?

If you wrote:

"where the only form of ``interlocking'' **is**",

than it would certainly be a "perfect anthithesis", but since you are
using the term *was* it means it *is no more*, a past tense, something
that has changed, and change is what I have suggested.

I think you are missunderstanding what I am saying: I am saying that
design needs to be changed; and the other thing is that I am suggesting
to rewrite the core API in CL instead of C, since you will get all those
things that constitute the Lisp Machine out for free; a better garbage
collector, a better threading, and better Lisp that are people are often
asking for. Of course you can implement all that stuff in C as well, it
just that it means redoing work that other people has done elsewhere.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

>  . we need volunteer(s) to actually do the work, and the requirements
>     for their talents are hard to meet; and

 From my POV, the gist of the problem is money. Firefox has it, Emacs 
doesn't.  With dozens of paid developers, which I think Firefox has, big 
projects like a rewrite or what else was mentioned, can be tackled. 
With volunteers, not so much.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> In which way is it "the perfect antithesis" to my standpoint, and what
> is my standpoint?

That Emacs must be rewritten from the drawing board to leverage
multiprocessor operation.

> If you wrote:
>
> "where the only form of ``interlocking'' **is**",
>
> than it would certainly be a "perfect anthithesis", but since you are
> using the term *was* it means it *is no more*, a past tense, something
> that has changed, and change is what I have suggested.

Multiple organizations took Unix and independently transformed it into
what it is today: CMU, Novell, Sun, and of course the many volunteers
who orchestrate the development of the free BSD systems.

What fundamental issues (aside from manpower and time, of course) impede
Emacs from undergoing the same transformation?  The Unix experience
indicates that this is well-trodden ground.

> I think you are missunderstanding what I am saying: I am saying that
> design needs to be changed; and the other thing is that I am suggesting
> to rewrite the core API in CL instead of C, since you will get all those
> things that constitute the Lisp Machine out for free; a better garbage
> collector, a better threading, and better Lisp that are people are often
> asking for. Of course you can implement all that stuff in C as well, it
> just that it means redoing work that other people has done elsewhere.

Last I checked, none of the popular Common Lisp systems supported MS-DOS
or ran satisfactorily on Android, nor was Common Lisp an especially well
known language.  There is a reason Emacs is written in C, and why its
present design has endured for so long: it is portable, it is reasonably
fast, and it is a subject familiar to all programmers.

Other Lisp systems aren't panaceas either: rewritten in Common Lisp or
not, the present Emacs design will still require interlocking to operate
safely in a multiprocessor environment.  Ergo, such a rewrite will only
compound the effort needed to produce a hypothetical ``Lockmacs'' (so to
speak) with the additional pains required to rewrite Emacs in a new
language, and one very few of the present maintainers are well versed in
at that.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > It was designed for the time of single-core slow
>   > machine, and its design makes sense in that perspective. 
>
> That is true.
>
>                                                              However, for
>   > todays multicore machines, the fact that a lisp machine is slapped on
>   > top of an existing text editor (Gosslings I guess),
>
> No, that's not how I developed it.
>
> I first wrote Emacs Lisp as a standalone Lisp interpreter.
> Then I wrote the code to handle buffers and editing the text in them.

Ah; I thought I remembered either from some of your articles or some of
earlier disucssions that you obtained a copy of GE from a friend, and
realized it needed a proper Lisp interpreter. Cool to hear a bit of
history, thank you.

> Turning to the question of future development,
> I think the design of Emacs is good enough,
> To rewrite Emacs completely would be an enormous misdirected effort.

No, I don't suggest to rewrite entire Emacs. On contrary I am
conservative about keeping Elisp as-is, as I said, it would be a waste
of human effort to throw away 40 years of work. No, on the contrary, and
that is why I suggested what I did, otherwise I would go to some greener
editor and use that; if I didn't found all the old work important, so to
say.

I suggest to re-implement the Lisp API implemented in C, in Common
Lisp. I understand that you didn't like Common Lisp back in the time
because it was big and slow for the computers at that time; but nowadays
things have changed. SBCL and CCL are two quite good compilers and would
give access to more advanced Lisp Machines than what one in Emacs is,
better garbage collector, native threading, namespaces, and so on.

> GNU Emacs is a part of the GNU opersating system,
> whose goal is to provide, in the Free World, all the features
> that people want.

Well, yes, I totally understand and agree. What I see from the
interaction with the Emacs community on social media, or at least on
Reddit where most of non-dev community seems to be, people want features
that are not in Emacs. Those mentioned above come up quite
often.

But it is about more than just features. It is about the widening the
community. Free world is bigger than just Emacs, as you seem to imply
yourself. Lisp communities are small, I think it is a pitty that we
can't natively use Common Lisp libraries. If we had Emacs implemented in
Common Lisp, we would get access to lots more libraries and tools than
what is in Elisp packages only. More eyes would be looking at Emacs too.

If extension and implementation language were the same, than more people
would potentially get enabled to contribute to Emacs. Of course, just
having the core in a hackable Lisp language does not mean everyone
*will* contribute or be able to contribute, but potentially, there might
be one or another individual that would. It might encourage more
experimentation and make it easier to test new ideas.

The speed of Emacs development would potentially increase; developing in
Lisp is much faster compared to hack, recompile, start Emacs
cycle. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean hacking C is hard, impenetrable,
undoable or so, I am just saying it could be smoother and faster.

People also do ask for better tools that enable "programming at large"
in Emacs. We do use Emacs for more than just editing text at least some
of us; it has become an automation tool. People also seems to want to
use Emacs and Emacs Lisp as a more general programming tool to solve
other problems, not just to extend the text editor. I think it is a good
thing.

> With the same work it would take to rewrite Emacs from scratch,

I see I have expressed myself exaggerated; I wrote the mail in just 3-4
minutes of fast typing; I should have probably explained myself
better. I meant that certain parts of Emacs have to be re-designed from
the scrath, things that prohibit multithreading, the shared state. It
does not necessary mean, that I suggest to throw away entire Emacs and
rewrite everything from scratch.

> we could write some other complex and powerful free program
> which does some other job -- a job that there is no free software to
> do.

Or we could improve Emacs and make it a powerful tool in another areas
where it is not as used.

For example, I think Emacs would be great as a teaching tool, I think I
have said that before on this list. I see concept of buffers in Emacs
Lisp, or rather to say, concept of editor implemented in the programming
language as a really good and useful tool. I mean it. Common Lisp
(probably some before it) has given us a repl as a mandatory tool in the
language. Emacs Lisp shows us that an editor as part of the environment
or language is as important as repl. I do miss edebug and seing the
result in another buffer when stepping through when I program with
sbcl. I wish Common Lisp had buffers and editor built-in. Implementing
Emacs in Common Lisp, would in a way, merge those two, and perhaps Emacs
could be used as another Processing or as a teaching tool where kids can
learn programming by interactive development, have the environment
avaialable for introspection, step through and see the results as they
execute the code and similar.

> Or we could add features -- to Emacs or some other free program -- which
> would greatly extend what people can do in the Free World.
>
> Consider, for instance, the idea of extending a free spell checking
> program so it could tell you the gender of each noun if you ask.
> Going beyond that, maybe it could check for agreement of modifiers
> with their nouns.  That would be a big help for writing in many
> Indo-European languages and Semitic languages.  Perhaps also other
> languages which have something grammatically like gender but not
> based on gender of humans.

I have no familiarity with spell-checking so I can't reflect on that one. I
struggled to install Hunspell in my Emacs untill Zaretsky helped me some
10 years ago or so :). But what you suggest seems to me like you would
need to find an expert for each language in question, which suggests
rather social skills than programming skills. I am more for solving math
problems after eveyone else is at sleep, so I can't help you with that one.

> That would be a tiny fraction of the work that people are proposing
> here.

I think on contrary; I propose to switch Emacs to a different Lisp
implementation so that devs here don't have to re-implement and maintain
some important parts of the Lisp Machine if Emacs will get features lots
of people seem to ask for. While what I suggest is a volumous work as
well, it also save a lot of work elsewhere, and opens some other
possibilities.

By the way, a single threaded shared state does not thread itself just
because it is transplanted over a multithreaded implementation :). Of
course. But getting access to such platform enables people to use
threads, while the implementation itself is tranformed, as well as buys
other benefits as discussed above.

Thanks for the kind answer, and I am hope I am not take wrong; I don't
mean Emacs is bad, and certainly notthing wrong. Actually I am very fond
of Emacs, I find it very useful tool, and would just like to see it ever
better. 

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
>> Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2023 17:14:41 +0200
>> 
>> I personally believe that Emacs as a project would benefit of complete
>> core rewrite, as well as unifying the extension and the implementation
>> language for several reasons. Yes, it is a lot of work, but even
>> rewriting C core to adapt Emacs to modern machines is a lot of work in
>> itself, if it is even possible.
>
> Sure, this has been said here several times.
>
> Two problems with this:
>
>   . we need volunteer(s) to actually do the work, and the requirements
>     for their talents are hard to meet; and
>   . the rewrite needs to keep all or most of Lisp still working, which
>     is IMNSHO almost impossible, because our Lisp is written for the
>     current design

If you implement your current design on the another platform, it would still
work the same, no?

By the way; I am sure you will have to implement quite feelable changes in the
current design regardless. Common Lisp implementation is just food for
thought. I think it was an interesting discussion, so I am just throwing out a
different idea I haven't seen around. I don't think is impossible, but I don't
say it is easy or trivial either. :)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> writes:

>>  . we need volunteer(s) to actually do the work, and the requirements
>>     for their talents are hard to meet; and
>
> From my POV, the gist of the problem is money. Firefox has it, Emacs doesn't.
> With dozens of paid developers, which I think Firefox has, big projects like a
> rewrite or what else was mentioned, can be tackled. With volunteers, not so
> much.

Definitely. 

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> In which way is it "the perfect antithesis" to my standpoint, and what
>> is my standpoint?
>
> That Emacs must be rewritten from the drawing board to leverage
> multiprocessor operation.

I think you have missunderstand what I mean; I can try make it clear
that I mean parts that considers Emacs core, shared state and so on.

>> If you wrote:
>>
>> "where the only form of ``interlocking'' **is**",
>>
>> than it would certainly be a "perfect anthithesis", but since you are
>> using the term *was* it means it *is no more*, a past tense, something
>> that has changed, and change is what I have suggested.
>
> Multiple organizations took Unix and independently transformed it into
> what it is today: CMU, Novell, Sun, and of course the many volunteers
> who orchestrate the development of the free BSD systems.

You are missing the point: I wasn't talking about *who* changed the
Unix; the point here is that it got *changed*.

> What fundamental issues (aside from manpower and time, of course) impede
> Emacs from undergoing the same transformation?  The Unix experience
> indicates that this is well-trodden ground.

None. And nobody has suggested that such issues exists either, it is your
construction. On contrary, I am saying that Emacs should undergo such
transformation :).

>> I think you are missunderstanding what I am saying: I am saying that
>> design needs to be changed; and the other thing is that I am suggesting
>> to rewrite the core API in CL instead of C, since you will get all those
>> things that constitute the Lisp Machine out for free; a better garbage
>> collector, a better threading, and better Lisp that are people are often
>> asking for. Of course you can implement all that stuff in C as well, it
>> just that it means redoing work that other people has done elsewhere.
>
> Last I checked, none of the popular Common Lisp systems supported MS-DOS

True. MS-DOS and Windows 95 would have to go away. Perhaps some other
popular OS from 1980s-1990s? 

> or ran satisfactorily on Android, nor was Common Lisp an especially well
> known language.  There is a reason Emacs is written in C, and why its
> present design has endured for so long: it is portable, it is reasonably
> fast, and it is a subject familiar to all programmers.

Well yes, C is portable and fast, nobody denies that. So are some CL
compilers. 

> Other Lisp systems aren't panaceas either: rewritten in Common Lisp or

Nobody said it is "panaceas". But sbcl would provide a better lisp
machine, in terms of garbagecollector, threading etc; something you will
have to develop for Emacs eventually. You heard that one about a guy
with name Isaac Newton and standing on shoulders of others? :)

> not, the present Emacs design will still require interlocking to operate
> safely in a multiprocessor environment.  Ergo, such a rewrite will only
> compound the effort needed to produce a hypothetical ``Lockmacs'' (so to

Just reimplementing the C core would not, because you wouldn't use
multiple threads. But if you would like to thread Emacs command loop or
internals itself, than you would have to reimplement it that way of
course. Think of Java Swing; at least 20 years ago when I war
programming Java, it was not thread safe, but worker threads were OK.

> speak) with the additional pains required to rewrite Emacs in a new
> language, and one very few of the present maintainers are well versed in
> at that.

I am sure present maintainers are well versed with CL, just not very
interested to rewrite Emacs in CL; and I wouldn't expected them to be
either :-). 

Observe that I am presenting some food for thought; I don't expect Emacs
devs to jump and say "Yes! What a great idea!". But I wouldn't be
suprised if at least some of them have had the idea in their mind at
some point in time. 

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> I think you have missunderstand what I mean; I can try make it clear
> that I mean parts that considers Emacs core, shared state and so on.

That's what I was referring to, yes.

> You are missing the point: I wasn't talking about *who* changed the
> Unix; the point here is that it got *changed*.

My point is, Unix has demonstrated many times over that programs written
in C can be interlocked, and doing so is more productive than a rewrite.

> None. And nobody has suggested that such issues exists either, it is your
> construction. On contrary, I am saying that Emacs should undergo such
> transformation :).

That contradicts your assertions below, where you propose returning to
the drawing board to produce an Emacs written in Common Lisp.  Curiously
enough, I can't locate any precedent for large and complex Common Lisp
programs being modified for multi-processor operation.

> True. MS-DOS and Windows 95 would have to go away. Perhaps some other
> popular OS from 1980s-1990s? 

They wouldn't have to go away if Emacs remains written in C.

> Well yes, C is portable and fast, nobody denies that. So are some CL
> compilers. 

Which Common Lisp compiler is capable of linking with Java code through
the JNI?  (ABCL doesn't work, as the Android JVM can't interpret the
bytecode it generates.)

> Nobody said it is "panaceas". But sbcl would provide a better lisp
> machine, in terms of garbagecollector, threading etc; something you will
> have to develop for Emacs eventually. You heard that one about a guy
> with name Isaac Newton and standing on shoulders of others? :)

SBCL only supports kernel-based threads on a handful of systems, and its
garbage collection strategies vary between machine types.  I'm sure we
would be capable of supporting more while remaining portable, and Common
Lisp leaves much to be desired as a pair of shoulders to stand on.

> Just reimplementing the C core would not, because you wouldn't use
> multiple threads. But if you would like to thread Emacs command loop or
> internals itself, than you would have to reimplement it that way of
> course. Think of Java Swing; at least 20 years ago when I war
> programming Java, it was not thread safe, but worker threads were OK.

You're okay with Emacs crashing if threads, wielded incorrectly, trample
over internal state?  If so, the global lock could be lifted from Emacs
Lisp in under a week.

Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many other
components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more
productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a detailed
plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool is
a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of paper.

> I am sure present maintainers are well versed with CL, just not very
> interested to rewrite Emacs in CL; and I wouldn't expected them to be
> either :-). 

Two data points: I'm not an adept Common Lisp programmer, nor is Eli.
I'm not even an Emacs Lisp programmer by vocation.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Andrea Monaco]

Turning a program into multi-threaded _may_ make it faster and more
responsive, but that is not necessary nor sufficient.

As an example on my laptop, Emacs (a big single-threaded program) is
faster and more responsive than web browsers and mail clients (big
multi-threaded programs).

Sometimes emacs freezes briefly, but so do the other programs.



Andrea Monaco

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many other
> components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
> invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more
> productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
> between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a detailed
> plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool is
> a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of paper.

And we tried to dig into this question in
https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/871qhnr4ty.fsf@localhost/
At least, the task does not look impossible.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

>> During native compilation, if type information and n and
>> d is available, GCC might have a chance to cut a number of
>> branches away from the above code.
>
> Does this indicate a tendency where one can foresee a future
> where Elisp is as fast as C to the point C could be
> dropped completely?

No. Low-level memory management must still be in C. And some
performance-critical that uses internals for efficiency.

For example, `transpose-regions' directly modifies internal buffer array
holding byte stream of the buffer text, suing memcpy.
There is no way this low-level structure is exposed to Elisp level.
(Otherwise, bad Elisp can simply crash Emacs).

> Still, I wonder if those typechecks in C really slow things
> down to the point it matters. Maybe for really huge
> number-crunching computations?

As with many other things, it depends.

We saw for bignums that typechecks are taking most time.
Typechecks also take significant time in fib benchmarks.
However, for example, Org parser spends most of the time in Emacs regexp
engine, not in typechecks.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> By the way, a single threaded shared state does not thread itself just
> because it is transplanted over a multithreaded implementation :). Of
> course. But getting access to such platform enables people to use
> threads, while the implementation itself is tranformed, as well as buys
> other benefits as discussed above.

I'll reiterate this again: facilitating the execution of Lisp threads in
parallel -- a more or less complete job -- is 5% of the work required
for a concurrent Emacs.

The tedious, insipid task of interlocking all that ``single threaded
shared state'' follows and constitutes the bulk of that work, which
someone must sign up for irrespective of the language it is written in.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> I think you have missunderstand what I mean; I can try make it clear
>> that I mean parts that considers Emacs core, shared state and so on.
>
> That's what I was referring to, yes.
>
>> You are missing the point: I wasn't talking about *who* changed the
>> Unix; the point here is that it got *changed*.
>
> My point is, Unix has demonstrated many times over that programs written
> in C can be interlocked, and doing so is more productive than a rewrite.

Unix which? Unix is not a single program; it is a family of operating
systems, and I am quite sure nobody runs the same kernel they did back in
1970. I don't know what you are talking about you have
"demonestrated". You said yourself *was* and not *is* which suggest that
those kernels are rewritten in order to support those C programs that
can be interlocked. Again you are constructing yourself things here: I
haven't said it is impossible to write mulththreaded C application that
can use locking.

There are many applicaitons that have been redesigned. Emacs has been
redesigned since its first incarnations as TECO editor if I have
understand the history. For the very last time: I haven't
said Emacs *can not be redesigned*, on the contrary, I said Emacs
*should be* redesigned. Emacs core so to say. You are fighting against
things I haven't said; I don't know why, if it is lack of English skill,
or something else, but we are talking constantly beside each other.

> in C can be interlocked, and doing so is more productive than a rewrite.

Are you saying that a non-multihtreaded program written in C can
suddenly become multithreaded without being re-written to support
threading? Nevermind, you are totally, on purpose or lack of
understanding, missing the point: you have to rewrite stuff to make it
multithreaded regardless of the language if you intention is to have
Emacs core multithreaded. Supporting multithreading is not same as
having entire Emacs internals be multithreaded.

>> None. And nobody has suggested that such issues exists either, it is your
>> construction. On contrary, I am saying that Emacs should undergo such
>> transformation :).
>
> That contradicts your assertions below, where you propose returning to

No, it does not because you have missunderstood that I mean something else.

> the drawing board to produce an Emacs written in Common Lisp.  Curiously

I propose porting core API to Common Lisp because that would save you
implementing all those things that you need to make Emacs
multithreaded, better GC etc, because it is not a trivial task.

Of course you can re-write all that stuff in C too, nobody is denying
that it is possible. I am saying there is no need to reduplicate the
work, and there are other benefits of having Emacs in Common Lisp.

> enough, I can't locate any precedent for large and complex Common Lisp
> programs being modified for multi-processor operation.

Look harder.

>> True. MS-DOS and Windows 95 would have to go away. Perhaps some other
>> popular OS from 1980s-1990s? 
>
> They wouldn't have to go away if Emacs remains written in C.

Tough argument indeed.

It is certainly very importnat to keep the development back to
support two ancient non-free OS:s.

>> Well yes, C is portable and fast, nobody denies that. So are some CL
>> compilers. 
>
> Which Common Lisp compiler is capable of linking with Java code through
> the JNI?  (ABCL doesn't work, as the Android JVM can't interpret the
> bytecode it generates.)

I don't know what you are trying to say; that sound like very uninformed
statement based on missunderstanding. Calling Java via native API and
generating bytecode that runs Lisp on top of Java as ABCL does are two
completely different and separate things. I am quite sure Emacs does not
generate Java byte code. But I don't see how is it even relevant, I
haven't suggested to run Emacs on JVM. Perhaps it is possible who know,
but I have suggested to use sbcl which is a native compiler specialized
for compiling Lisp (and runs on Android as well).

>> Nobody said it is "panaceas". But sbcl would provide a better lisp
>> machine, in terms of garbagecollector, threading etc; something you will
>> have to develop for Emacs eventually. You heard that one about a guy
>> with name Isaac Newton and standing on shoulders of others? :)
>
> SBCL only supports kernel-based threads on a handful of systems, and its

"only" ? :-) I can asure you that Lispers have access to both kernel and
user space threads. Search on Bordeaux threads.

> garbage collection strategies vary between machine types.  I'm sure we

Does it?

> would be capable of supporting more while remaining portable, and Common
> Lisp leaves much to be desired as a pair of shoulders to stand on.

I am also sure everything is possible, it is software, as a wise old
grey head once said. It is just how much effort and resource you are
pouring into it. SBCL runs on basically all important platforms on which
Emacs runs, minus as mentioned DOS and Windows95; I don't know if there is
 some other. But it is not the point. The point is: there is another
community working on the same problems you have or wish to solve. And
they have come far away than you. You could re-use their work, and if
you miss somethign add those missing parts so everyone would benefit, or
you can live in an isolated island and do everything yourself.

>> Just reimplementing the C core would not, because you wouldn't use
>> multiple threads. But if you would like to thread Emacs command loop or
>> internals itself, than you would have to reimplement it that way of
>> course. Think of Java Swing; at least 20 years ago when I war
>> programming Java, it was not thread safe, but worker threads were OK.
>
> You're okay with Emacs crashing if threads, wielded incorrectly, trample
> over internal state?  If so, the global lock could be lifted from Emacs
> Lisp in under a week.

I am telling you that sbcl/ccl has already solved those problems you
have to solve in order to have multithreading without having to lift
your lock.

> Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many other
> components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
> invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more

I don't think I understand how I "denigrate the C language" and what
"unjustify invective" in this case is, but I don't think it
matters. Once you also said I should be forbidden to talk about Emacs.

>                                    direct your attention to a more
> productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
> between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a detailed
> plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool is
> a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of paper.

Can we save nature and our selves?

>> I am sure present maintainers are well versed with CL, just not very
>> interested to rewrite Emacs in CL; and I wouldn't expected them to be
>> either :-). 
>
> Two data points: I'm not an adept Common Lisp programmer, nor is Eli.
> I'm not even an Emacs Lisp programmer by vocation.

Nor are you sole Emacs devs, aren't you? I don't think calling names is
appropriate, so I want, but I can come up with at least four people who
work on Emacs and who are experienced Lispers. How active they are in
development recently I don't know, I don't follow the list every day as
I am used to, but I certainly haven't targeted Eli nor you with that one.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many other
>> components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
>> invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more
>> productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
>> between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a detailed
>> plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool is
>> a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of paper.
>
> And we tried to dig into this question in
> https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/871qhnr4ty.fsf@localhost/
> At least, the task does not look impossible.

That was a long thread to say mildly :) I don't have time to read all
that, but thanks for the pointer. To answer shortly.

Po has narrowed this to be a discussion about threading only, which
certainly wasn't my intention; I see it as an important part, but there
are other importnat aspects which would benefit Emacs than just
multithreading.

I generally agree with you, even with Po; I think it is possible in some
way, I never said it is impossible to rework Emacs.

For example if we could instantiate the interpretter on its own, with an
empty state, than you could perhaps run that in a separate thread, but I
am affraid everything is just one big state and would mean some
refactoring.

I am not sure if sitting and trying to puzzle pieces to interlock during
the execution as Po suggests is a very good idea. Again *anything* is
possible, but that sounds like a very tedious and error prone strategy
to me. I can't read the entire thread, there are tens if not 100s of
posts there, so I don't know what you have come up with.

However, my thesis was not that it is impossible to do in Emacs, but
that there is a lisp machine that already has figured out that work.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Andrea Monaco <andrea.monaco@autistici.org> writes:

> Turning a program into multi-threaded _may_ make it faster and more
> responsive, but that is not necessary nor sufficient.
>
> As an example on my laptop, Emacs (a big single-threaded program) is
> faster and more responsive than web browsers and mail clients (big
> multi-threaded programs).

I am affraid that would be very missleading comparison. Your browsers do
a __lot__ more work than Emacs does, and I mean __lot__. It is like
saying Notepad is so very much faster than Gimp. Trying opening an image
of size say 1200z1024 in Emacs and zoom in/out, compare to the same
operation in  your browser.

> Sometimes emacs freezes briefly, but so do the other programs.
>
>
>
> Andrea Monaco

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> By the way, a single threaded shared state does not thread itself just
>> because it is transplanted over a multithreaded implementation :). Of
>> course. But getting access to such platform enables people to use
>> threads, while the implementation itself is tranformed, as well as buys
>> other benefits as discussed above.
>
> I'll reiterate this again: facilitating the execution of Lisp threads in
> parallel -- a more or less complete job -- is 5% of the work required
> for a concurrent Emacs.
>
> The tedious, insipid task of interlocking all that ``single threaded
> shared state'' follows and constitutes the bulk of that work, which
> someone must sign up for irrespective of the language it is written in.

Perhaps you are attacking the task from the wrong angle? I think that
sounds like a very tedius and error prone strategy. Why not refactor the
interpreter so you can instantiate it with an empty state in a separate
thread? I don't know; I am perhaps wrong, but isn't it more safe
strategy to isolate the state in their own threads instead of trying to
interloc bunch of stuff all over the place?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Unix which? Unix is not a single program; it is a family of operating
> systems, and I am quite sure nobody runs the same kernel they did back
> in 1970. I don't know what you are talking about you have
> "demonestrated". You said yourself *was* and not *is* which suggest
> that those kernels are rewritten in order to support those C programs
> that can be interlocked. Again you are constructing yourself things
> here: I haven't said it is impossible to write mulththreaded C
> application that can use locking.

Each extant Unix system today contains gobs of code derived from the
Unix kernel developed at BTL in the 1970s.  None of their kernels were
ever rewritten -- rather, they were subject to iterative refinement that
eventually allowed them to operate on SMP systems.

> There are many applicaitons that have been redesigned. Emacs has been
> redesigned since its first incarnations as TECO editor if I have
> understand the history. For the very last time: I haven't said Emacs
> *can not be redesigned*, on the contrary, I said Emacs *should be*
> redesigned. Emacs core so to say. You are fighting against things I
> haven't said; I don't know why, if it is lack of English skill, or
> something else, but we are talking constantly beside each other.

Perhaps you define the word "rewrite" differently, but its customary
meaning implies a reimplementation from square zero.  My point is that
doing so is a gratuitous and unnecessary gesture, and we would be better
served by more realistic assessments and consequently more reasonable
proposals.

> Are you saying that a non-multihtreaded program written in C can
> suddenly become multithreaded without being re-written to support
> threading? Nevermind, you are totally, on purpose or lack of
> understanding, missing the point: you have to rewrite stuff to make it
> multithreaded regardless of the language if you intention is to have
> Emacs core multithreaded. Supporting multithreading is not same as
> having entire Emacs internals be multithreaded.

Since when does interlocking call for a rewrite?

> No, it does not because you have missunderstood that I mean something
> else.

Then clarify what it is, for the plans you present (rewriting Emacs in a
different language) sure resemble plans for a complete grounds-up
reimplementation.

> I propose porting core API to Common Lisp because that would save you
> implementing all those things that you need to make Emacs
> multithreaded, better GC etc, because it is not a trivial task.

At the cost of portability and control?  No, thank you.
Let me ask a question in turn: how many of the popular and often-cited
Common Lisp implementations are as old as Emacs?  What guarantee is
there of their continued existence 10 or 20 years into the future?

> Of course you can re-write all that stuff in C too, nobody is denying
> that it is possible. I am saying there is no need to reduplicate the
> work, and there are other benefits of having Emacs in Common Lisp.

The work to be duplicated is menial and more-or-less already complete.
The remaining bulk will need to be tackled irrespective of the language
used to implement Emacs.  The conclusion as to whether we should
overcome that bulk as-is, of if we should compound it with the challenge
of rewriting Emacs in a new language, is left as an exercise to the
reader.

> Look harder.

Any examples?

>>> Well yes, C is portable and fast, nobody denies that. So are some
>>> CL
>>> compilers. 
>>
>> Which Common Lisp compiler is capable of linking with Java code
>> through
>> the JNI?  (ABCL doesn't work, as the Android JVM can't interpret the
>> bytecode it generates.)
>
> I don't know what you are trying to say; that sound like very
> uninformed statement based on missunderstanding. Calling Java via
> native API and generating bytecode that runs Lisp on top of Java as
> ABCL does are two completely different and separate things. I am quite
> sure Emacs does not generate Java byte code. But I don't see how is it
> even relevant, I haven't suggested to run Emacs on JVM. Perhaps it is
> possible who know, but I have suggested to use sbcl which is a native
> compiler specialized for compiling Lisp (and runs on Android as well).

It's not possible to load a Common Lisp image into the JVM, because the
Java linker is only capable of linking compiled C objects that export C
symbols.  Therefore, SBCL cannot run within any GUI Android program,
given that they must be started from Java.

> "only" ? :-) I can asure you that Lispers have access to both kernel
> and user space threads. Search on Bordeaux threads.

That's only a wrapper library for the incoherent threading primitives
furnished by different Common Lisp implementations.

>> garbage collection strategies vary between machine types.  I'm sure
>> we
>
> Does it?

Yes it does.

> I am also sure everything is possible, it is software, as a wise old
> grey head once said. It is just how much effort and resource you are
> pouring into it. SBCL runs on basically all important platforms on
> which Emacs runs, minus as mentioned DOS and Windows95; I don't know
> if there is some other. But it is not the point. The point is: there
> is another community working on the same problems you have or wish to
> solve. And they have come far away than you. You could re-use their
> work, and if you miss somethign add those missing parts so everyone
> would benefit, or you can live in an isolated island and do everything
> yourself.

C is hardly an "isolated island".  Anyway, we need a portable, fast,
flexible and ubiquitous language, and Common Lisp doesn't fit the bill:
if a platform as anodyne as Android poses problems for it, what about
the next sandboxing contraption for Unix systems?  Or any future system
whose appearance down the line we cannot anticipate now?  What if our
requirements outgrow Common Lisp's capabilities?

> I am telling you that sbcl/ccl has already solved those problems you
> have to solve in order to have multithreading without having to lift
> your lock.

We have too.  What we have not, they cannot offer either.

>> Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many
>> other
>> components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
>> invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more
>
> I don't think I understand how I "denigrate the C language" and what
> "unjustify invective" in this case is, but I don't think it
> matters. Once you also said I should be forbidden to talk about Emacs.

It does, because such motives drive people to engage in many hours of
time wasting wild goose chases, all to ascertain which language
Providence meant for Emacs to be written in.

>>                                    direct your attention to a more
>> productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
>> between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a
>> detailed
>> plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool
>> is
>> a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of
>> paper.
>
> Can we save nature and our selves?

Parse error, sorry.

> Nor are you sole Emacs devs, aren't you? I don't think calling names
> is appropriate, so I want, but I can come up with at least four people
> who work on Emacs and who are experienced Lispers. How active they are
> in development recently I don't know, I don't follow the list every
> day as I am used to, but I certainly haven't targeted Eli nor you with
> that one.

Names?  Would they be willing to take responsibility for the areas which
we oversee, in the event a Common Lisp Emacs comes to pass?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> However, my thesis was not that it is impossible to do in Emacs, but
> that there is a lisp machine that already has figured out that work.

Unless that lisp machine supports all the Elisp concepts, it will not be
useful. So, from my point of view, what you suggest is: instead of
adding multi-threading to Elisp, add all the missing Elisp parts to
other lisp machine. I suspect that adding Elisp-unique parts in a way
that all the existing Elisp code continue working is harder compared to
modifying Elisp machine.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> However, my thesis was not that it is impossible to do in Emacs, but
> that there is a lisp machine that already has figured out that work.

As is already customary from you, this conflates the job of running the
Lisp interpreter within different lwps with the task of making it safe
to do so, should code running in that interpreter attempt to leverage
Emacs primitives.

True, the first problem has already been solved by eminent Lisp
implementations.  But we have almost solved it as well.  And if two
threads modify a buffer simultaneously, leaving PT and PT_BYTE out of
accord, Emacs will crash regardless of whose threads it's using.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Perhaps you are attacking the task from the wrong angle? I think that
> sounds like a very tedius and error prone strategy. Why not refactor
> the interpreter so you can instantiate it with an empty state in a
> separate thread? I don't know; I am perhaps wrong, but isn't it more
> safe strategy to isolate the state in their own threads instead of
> trying to interloc bunch of stuff all over the place?

How is that distinct from running Emacs within a subprocess?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> Unix which? Unix is not a single program; it is a family of operating
>> systems, and I am quite sure nobody runs the same kernel they did back
>> in 1970. I don't know what you are talking about you have
>> "demonestrated". You said yourself *was* and not *is* which suggest
>> that those kernels are rewritten in order to support those C programs
>> that can be interlocked. Again you are constructing yourself things
>> here: I haven't said it is impossible to write mulththreaded C
>> application that can use locking.
>
> Each extant Unix system today contains gobs of code derived from the
> Unix kernel developed at BTL in the 1970s.  None of their kernels were
> ever rewritten -- rather, they were subject to iterative refinement that
> eventually allowed them to operate on SMP systems.

The word "rewritten" does not imply any time frame.

>> There are many applicaitons that have been redesigned. Emacs has been
>> redesigned since its first incarnations as TECO editor if I have
>> understand the history. For the very last time: I haven't said Emacs
>> *can not be redesigned*, on the contrary, I said Emacs *should be*
>> redesigned. Emacs core so to say. You are fighting against things I
>> haven't said; I don't know why, if it is lack of English skill, or
>> something else, but we are talking constantly beside each other.
>
> Perhaps you define the word "rewrite" differently, but its customary
> meaning implies a reimplementation from square zero.  My point is that

Perhaps you should concentrate on C coding not on your work to define
English dictionary?

>                                                       My point is that
> doing so is a gratuitous and unnecessary gesture, and we would be better
> served by more realistic assessments and consequently more reasonable
> proposals.

Yes, you have expressed a year or more ago as well I should be forbidden
to talk about Emacs. :). Perhaps you shouldn't have answered; nobody has
forced you.

I discuss gladly any technical aspects; actually that was my
hope; but I am certainly neither amused nor very interested to discuss
neither my character as you implied in another answer in this thread,
nor meaning of words in English language. I have expressed an idea in a
thread I found interesting, if it bothers you for any reason, tough
shit, don't answer.

>> Are you saying that a non-multihtreaded program written in C can
>> suddenly become multithreaded without being re-written to support
>> threading? Nevermind, you are totally, on purpose or lack of
>> understanding, missing the point: you have to rewrite stuff to make it
>> multithreaded regardless of the language if you intention is to have
>> Emacs core multithreaded. Supporting multithreading is not same as
>> having entire Emacs internals be multithreaded.
>
> Since when does interlocking call for a rewrite?
>
>> No, it does not because you have missunderstood that I mean something
>> else.
>
> Then clarify what it is, for the plans you present (rewriting Emacs in a
> different language) sure resemble plans for a complete grounds-up
> reimplementation.
>
>> I propose porting core API to Common Lisp because that would save you
>> implementing all those things that you need to make Emacs
>> multithreaded, better GC etc, because it is not a trivial task.
>
> At the cost of portability and control?  No, thank you.
> Let me ask a question in turn: how many of the popular and often-cited
> Common Lisp implementations are as old as Emacs?  What guarantee is
> there of their continued existence 10 or 20 years into the future?
>
>> Of course you can re-write all that stuff in C too, nobody is denying
>> that it is possible. I am saying there is no need to reduplicate the
>> work, and there are other benefits of having Emacs in Common Lisp.
>
> The work to be duplicated is menial and more-or-less already complete.
> The remaining bulk will need to be tackled irrespective of the language
> used to implement Emacs.  The conclusion as to whether we should
> overcome that bulk as-is, of if we should compound it with the challenge
> of rewriting Emacs in a new language, is left as an exercise to the
> reader.
>
>> Look harder.
>
> Any examples?
>
>>>> Well yes, C is portable and fast, nobody denies that. So are some
>>>> CL
>>>> compilers. 
>>>
>>> Which Common Lisp compiler is capable of linking with Java code
>>> through
>>> the JNI?  (ABCL doesn't work, as the Android JVM can't interpret the
>>> bytecode it generates.)
>>
>> I don't know what you are trying to say; that sound like very
>> uninformed statement based on missunderstanding. Calling Java via
>> native API and generating bytecode that runs Lisp on top of Java as
>> ABCL does are two completely different and separate things. I am quite
>> sure Emacs does not generate Java byte code. But I don't see how is it
>> even relevant, I haven't suggested to run Emacs on JVM. Perhaps it is
>> possible who know, but I have suggested to use sbcl which is a native
>> compiler specialized for compiling Lisp (and runs on Android as well).
>
> It's not possible to load a Common Lisp image into the JVM, because the
> Java linker is only capable of linking compiled C objects that export C
> symbols.  Therefore, SBCL cannot run within any GUI Android program,
> given that they must be started from Java.
>
>> "only" ? :-) I can asure you that Lispers have access to both kernel
>> and user space threads. Search on Bordeaux threads.
>
> That's only a wrapper library for the incoherent threading primitives
> furnished by different Common Lisp implementations.
>
>>> garbage collection strategies vary between machine types.  I'm sure
>>> we
>>
>> Does it?
>
> Yes it does.
>
>> I am also sure everything is possible, it is software, as a wise old
>> grey head once said. It is just how much effort and resource you are
>> pouring into it. SBCL runs on basically all important platforms on
>> which Emacs runs, minus as mentioned DOS and Windows95; I don't know
>> if there is some other. But it is not the point. The point is: there
>> is another community working on the same problems you have or wish to
>> solve. And they have come far away than you. You could re-use their
>> work, and if you miss somethign add those missing parts so everyone
>> would benefit, or you can live in an isolated island and do everything
>> yourself.
>
> C is hardly an "isolated island".  Anyway, we need a portable, fast,
> flexible and ubiquitous language, and Common Lisp doesn't fit the bill:
> if a platform as anodyne as Android poses problems for it, what about
> the next sandboxing contraption for Unix systems?  Or any future system
> whose appearance down the line we cannot anticipate now?  What if our
> requirements outgrow Common Lisp's capabilities?
>
>> I am telling you that sbcl/ccl has already solved those problems you
>> have to solve in order to have multithreading without having to lift
>> your lock.
>
> We have too.  What we have not, they cannot offer either.
>
>>> Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many
>>> other
>>> components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
>>> invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more
>>
>> I don't think I understand how I "denigrate the C language" and what
>> "unjustify invective" in this case is, but I don't think it
>> matters. Once you also said I should be forbidden to talk about Emacs.
>
> It does, because such motives drive people to engage in many hours of
> time wasting wild goose chases, all to ascertain which language
> Providence meant for Emacs to be written in.
>
>>>                                    direct your attention to a more
>>> productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
>>> between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a
>>> detailed
>>> plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool
>>> is
>>> a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of
>>> paper.
>>
>> Can we save nature and our selves?
>
> Parse error, sorry.

You mean sorry but no sorry?

Look; you are always indulging into Twitch/Reddit style trolling which
in my opinion has nothing to do with your English skills as Eli suggests
and warns about.

I am fully aware that your aggressive tone and way you speak to me are
because of your assumptions that I am an idiot, and you were not the
only one on this list. You are completely free to have any opinion about
me, I can't care less.

Consider if it is good for Emacs and GNU projects to alienate people who
are willing to help, and if it is representative for the free world to
tell who should be allow to speak and what about.

>> Nor are you sole Emacs devs, aren't you? I don't think calling names
>> is appropriate, so I want, but I can come up with at least four people
>> who work on Emacs and who are experienced Lispers. How active they are
>> in development recently I don't know, I don't follow the list every
>> day as I am used to, but I certainly haven't targeted Eli nor you with
>> that one.
>
> Names?  Would they be willing to take responsibility for the areas which
> we oversee, in the event a Common Lisp Emacs comes to pass?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> However, my thesis was not that it is impossible to do in Emacs, but
>> that there is a lisp machine that already has figured out that work.
>
> Unless that lisp machine supports all the Elisp concepts, it will not be
> useful. So, from my point of view, what you suggest is: instead of
> adding multi-threading to Elisp, add all the missing Elisp parts to
> other lisp machine. I suspect that adding Elisp-unique parts in a way

Pretty much so yes.

>                     I suspect that adding Elisp-unique parts in a way
> that all the existing Elisp code continue working is harder compared to
> modifying Elisp machine.

No, I don't think so. Honestly. 

Or, as always, it depends :). Mostly on hat is considered as hard
parts. Adding missing stuff to CL is most volymous dull labour but
conceptually not very hard. There are some nasty spots like implementing
elisp reader for character handling. It was quite annoying since
character handlign is mostly just a wrapper over C and quite
inconsistent in Emacs, so it was lots of cases to cover and lots of
testing, but logically it was not a problem that needs some special
thinkering to solve it or so, if I am expressing myself clearly here

> Feel free to prove me wrong.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> However, my thesis was not that it is impossible to do in Emacs, but
>> that there is a lisp machine that already has figured out that work.
>
> As is already customary from you

I'll take that one as english skill; and I really mean it in this case,
since the discussion further suggest that.

> Lisp interpreter within different lwps with the task of making it safe
> to do so, should code running in that interpreter attempt to leverage
> Emacs primitives.

I am not sure what you are trying to tell here.

> True, the first problem has already been solved by eminent Lisp
> implementations.  But we have almost solved it as well.  And if two

Well, I am very glad if you did. Honestly.

>                                                          And if two
> threads modify a buffer simultaneously, leaving PT and PT_BYTE out of
> accord, Emacs will crash regardless of whose threads it's using.

Is it possible to let one thread at a time modify the buffer (lock the
buffer) and use some notification system to tell other threads they
should update their view of buffer state when they resume, or perhaps
some "main thread" can update the buffer state a thread sees before it
is resumed?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> Perhaps you are attacking the task from the wrong angle? I think that
>> sounds like a very tedius and error prone strategy. Why not refactor
>> the interpreter so you can instantiate it with an empty state in a
>> separate thread? I don't know; I am perhaps wrong, but isn't it more
>> safe strategy to isolate the state in their own threads instead of
>> trying to interloc bunch of stuff all over the place?
>
> How is that distinct from running Emacs within a subprocess?

It is not, but it is not a question :).

It is basically same as what async package does. I have actually said
that in defense of Emacs many times in disucssions when people ask for
"worker threads" on Reddit.

However, it is a bit more efficient if you could start an interpretter
in a thread than Emacs process; and it will lead to refactoring out Lisp
interpretter from the Emacs application state which will hopefully
lessen the shared state and make it easier to analyze the locking stuff
you talk about.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> Unix which? Unix is not a single program; it is a family of operating
>> systems, and I am quite sure nobody runs the same kernel they did back
>> in 1970. I don't know what you are talking about you have
>> "demonestrated". You said yourself *was* and not *is* which suggest
>> that those kernels are rewritten in order to support those C programs
>> that can be interlocked. Again you are constructing yourself things
>> here: I haven't said it is impossible to write mulththreaded C
>> application that can use locking.
>
> Each extant Unix system today contains gobs of code derived from the
> Unix kernel developed at BTL in the 1970s.  None of their kernels were
> ever rewritten -- rather, they were subject to iterative refinement that
> eventually allowed them to operate on SMP systems.
>
>> There are many applicaitons that have been redesigned. Emacs has been
>> redesigned since its first incarnations as TECO editor if I have
>> understand the history. For the very last time: I haven't said Emacs
>> *can not be redesigned*, on the contrary, I said Emacs *should be*
>> redesigned. Emacs core so to say. You are fighting against things I
>> haven't said; I don't know why, if it is lack of English skill, or
>> something else, but we are talking constantly beside each other.
>
> Perhaps you define the word "rewrite" differently, but its customary
> meaning implies a reimplementation from square zero.  My point is that
> doing so is a gratuitous and unnecessary gesture, and we would be better
> served by more realistic assessments and consequently more reasonable
> proposals.
>
>> Are you saying that a non-multihtreaded program written in C can
>> suddenly become multithreaded without being re-written to support
>> threading? Nevermind, you are totally, on purpose or lack of
>> understanding, missing the point: you have to rewrite stuff to make it
>> multithreaded regardless of the language if you intention is to have
>> Emacs core multithreaded. Supporting multithreading is not same as
>> having entire Emacs internals be multithreaded.
>
> Since when does interlocking call for a rewrite?
>
>> No, it does not because you have missunderstood that I mean something
>> else.
>
> Then clarify what it is, for the plans you present (rewriting Emacs in a
> different language) sure resemble plans for a complete grounds-up
> reimplementation.
>
>> I propose porting core API to Common Lisp because that would save you
>> implementing all those things that you need to make Emacs
>> multithreaded, better GC etc, because it is not a trivial task.
>
> At the cost of portability and control?  No, thank you.
> Let me ask a question in turn: how many of the popular and often-cited
> Common Lisp implementations are as old as Emacs?  What guarantee is
> there of their continued existence 10 or 20 years into the future?
>
>> Of course you can re-write all that stuff in C too, nobody is denying
>> that it is possible. I am saying there is no need to reduplicate the
>> work, and there are other benefits of having Emacs in Common Lisp.
>
> The work to be duplicated is menial and more-or-less already complete.
> The remaining bulk will need to be tackled irrespective of the language
> used to implement Emacs.  The conclusion as to whether we should
> overcome that bulk as-is, of if we should compound it with the challenge
> of rewriting Emacs in a new language, is left as an exercise to the
> reader.
>
>> Look harder.
>
> Any examples?
>
>>>> Well yes, C is portable and fast, nobody denies that. So are some
>>>> CL
>>>> compilers. 
>>>
>>> Which Common Lisp compiler is capable of linking with Java code
>>> through
>>> the JNI?  (ABCL doesn't work, as the Android JVM can't interpret the
>>> bytecode it generates.)
>>
>> I don't know what you are trying to say; that sound like very
>> uninformed statement based on missunderstanding. Calling Java via
>> native API and generating bytecode that runs Lisp on top of Java as
>> ABCL does are two completely different and separate things. I am quite
>> sure Emacs does not generate Java byte code. But I don't see how is it
>> even relevant, I haven't suggested to run Emacs on JVM. Perhaps it is
>> possible who know, but I have suggested to use sbcl which is a native
>> compiler specialized for compiling Lisp (and runs on Android as well).
>
> It's not possible to load a Common Lisp image into the JVM, because the
> Java linker is only capable of linking compiled C objects that export C
> symbols.  Therefore, SBCL cannot run within any GUI Android program,
> given that they must be started from Java.
>
>> "only" ? :-) I can asure you that Lispers have access to both kernel
>> and user space threads. Search on Bordeaux threads.
>
> That's only a wrapper library for the incoherent threading primitives
> furnished by different Common Lisp implementations.
>
>>> garbage collection strategies vary between machine types.  I'm sure
>>> we
>>
>> Does it?
>
> Yes it does.
>
>> I am also sure everything is possible, it is software, as a wise old
>> grey head once said. It is just how much effort and resource you are
>> pouring into it. SBCL runs on basically all important platforms on
>> which Emacs runs, minus as mentioned DOS and Windows95; I don't know
>> if there is some other. But it is not the point. The point is: there
>> is another community working on the same problems you have or wish to
>> solve. And they have come far away than you. You could re-use their
>> work, and if you miss somethign add those missing parts so everyone
>> would benefit, or you can live in an isolated island and do everything
>> yourself.
>
> C is hardly an "isolated island".  Anyway, we need a portable, fast,
> flexible and ubiquitous language, and Common Lisp doesn't fit the bill:
> if a platform as anodyne as Android poses problems for it, what about
> the next sandboxing contraption for Unix systems?  Or any future system
> whose appearance down the line we cannot anticipate now?  What if our
> requirements outgrow Common Lisp's capabilities?
>
>> I am telling you that sbcl/ccl has already solved those problems you
>> have to solve in order to have multithreading without having to lift
>> your lock.
>
> We have too.  What we have not, they cannot offer either.
>
>>> Instead of denigrating the C language, Emacs's C core, and so many
>>> other
>>> components critical to Emacs that have been subject to unjustified
>>> invective in recent times, why not direct your attention to a more
>>
>> I don't think I understand how I "denigrate the C language" and what
>> "unjustify invective" in this case is, but I don't think it
>> matters. Once you also said I should be forbidden to talk about Emacs.
>
> It does, because such motives drive people to engage in many hours of
> time wasting wild goose chases, all to ascertain which language
> Providence meant for Emacs to be written in.
>
>>>                                    direct your attention to a more
>>> productive task, such as identifying the complex interdependencies
>>> between different pieces of Emacs's global state to establish a
>>> detailed
>>> plan for their interlocking?  For this task, the most important tool
>>> is
>>> a control-flow visualizer such as cflow, and an ample supply of
>>> paper.
>>
>> Can we save nature and our selves?
>
> Parse error, sorry.
>
>> Nor are you sole Emacs devs, aren't you? I don't think calling names
>> is appropriate, so I want, but I can come up with at least four people
>> who work on Emacs and who are experienced Lispers. How active they are
>> in development recently I don't know, I don't follow the list every
>> day as I am used to, but I certainly haven't targeted Eli nor you with
>> that one.
>
> Names?  Would they be willing to take responsibility for the areas which
> we oversee, in the event a Common Lisp Emacs comes to pass?

Perhaps this recently released paper might be of interest to you:

https://applied-langua.ge/~hayley/swcl-gc.pdf

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Is it possible to let one thread at a time modify the buffer (lock the
                                                                ^^^^

You're describing interlocking.  Again, the bulk of the work someone
will have to perform, no matter what language we use for Emacs.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> The word "rewritten" does not imply any time frame.

How is a time frame relevant?

> Yes, you have expressed a year or more ago as well I should be forbidden
> to talk about Emacs. :). Perhaps you shouldn't have answered; nobody has
> forced you.

Forbidden?  Are you sure you're not placing words in my mouth?

> I discuss gladly any technical aspects; actually that was my
> hope; but I am certainly neither amused nor very interested to discuss
> neither my character as you implied in another answer in this thread,
> nor meaning of words in English language. I have expressed an idea in a
> thread I found interesting, if it bothers you for any reason, tough
> shit, don't answer.

And I've been trying to articulate why such ideas invariably lead us
down purposeless wild goose chases.  I have never attempted to comment
on your character.

> You mean sorry but no sorry?
>
> Look; you are always indulging into Twitch/Reddit style trolling which
> in my opinion has nothing to do with your English skills as Eli suggests
> and warns about.

My haunts include neither Twitch nor Reddit.  Please watch your tone.

> I am fully aware that your aggressive tone and way you speak to me are
> because of your assumptions that I am an idiot, and you were not the
> only one on this list. You are completely free to have any opinion about
> me, I can't care less.

Aggressive how?

> Consider if it is good for Emacs and GNU projects to alienate people who
> are willing to help, and if it is representative for the free world to
> tell who should be allow to speak and what about.

If any criticism of your ideas from valid technical perspectives is
``alienation'', I suggest you revisit the expectations you apply to
others.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2023 12:15:12 +0800
> 
> > I am fully aware that your aggressive tone and way you speak to me are
> > because of your assumptions that I am an idiot, and you were not the
> > only one on this list. You are completely free to have any opinion about
> > me, I can't care less.
> 
> Aggressive how?
> 
> > Consider if it is good for Emacs and GNU projects to alienate people who
> > are willing to help, and if it is representative for the free world to
> > tell who should be allow to speak and what about.
> 
> If any criticism of your ideas from valid technical perspectives is
> ``alienation'', I suggest you revisit the expectations you apply to
> others.

IMNSHO, you should both cool down.  This discussion, which keeps
beating a long-dead horse, isn't worth of aggravation and hurt
feelings.  So I suggest to just agree to disagree and move on.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Po Lu wrote:

> True, the first problem has already been solved by eminent
> Lisp implementations. But we have almost solved it as well.
> And if two threads modify a buffer simultaneously, leaving
> PT and PT_BYTE out of accord, Emacs will crash regardless of
> whose threads it's using.

Are we talking some POSIX PCB mutex/semaphore model for Emacs
so it can take advantage of modern-day multicore processors
and for example execute `let' clauses in parallel?

Or what exactly is the problem and proposed solution?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Aurélien Aptel wrote:

> Your pw_random_number() function is leaking the file
> descriptor. You need to close fd each call.

Thanks for the feedback, I closed the fd.

Check it out again if it interests you:

  https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/random-urandom/random-urandom.c

PS. Email tagging, as I see you use, +emacs in this case, is
    that common for Gmail? Some people use it to avoid spam.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
is a non-starter.

It would be an enormouse job -- including rewriting the Emacs Lisp
Referance Manual.  We can't be sure how much the benefit would be,
because Common Lisp has some drawbacks too.  But we know the cost is
prohibitive.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I ask everyone in this discussion to try to disagree more kindly and
without rancor.  In this discussion we all want the same overall
goal, and if we disagree about the best way to achieve it, lets try to
work together to figure that out.

Please see https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
> is a non-starter.

Can we not even talk about it?

Is it really bad to talk about an idea? If you believe that such a
simple idea can hurt you or your project, than I don't think "free
speach" and GNU goes together in the same text, more than possibly as a
sarcastic remark.

> It would be an enormouse job

Sure. I agree on that one.

>                                 including rewriting the Emacs Lisp
> Referance Manual.

Actually, I don't know if I was clear in my first post, but my raison
d'etre for converting Emacs to CL is to actually preserve emacs-lisp bug
by bug, feature by feature, for the explicit reason of not throwing away
40 years of work. As I said; Emacs Lisp is *the* best documented Lisp,
and that is extremely important. People complain a lot on social media
about CL being arcane (hyperspec) and 3rd party libraries undocumented
or badly documented. In my opinion the strong points of elisp are
documentation, manual, 3rd party packages and being relatively small.

Otherwise, if I didn't want to preserve the documentation and manual,
and don't want to run Emacs applications, I would just go over to some
of the text editors already implemented in common lisp. Their problem is
that they are "emacs like", but not Emacs. They basically have to
re-implement everything from scratch. Which is a shame. But if we
implement emacs lisp in cl than we can run 3rd party apps in Emacs in CL
and people can re-use their knowledge, docs and the manual in writing
3rd party applications.

>                    We can't be sure how much the benefit would be,

You can't know anything for sure. But you do know that you would got
work that yat has to be done in Emacs, and you know that you would get
language features that lots of people ask for. It seems that either
Common Lisp will come to Emacs or Emacs will come to Common Lisp,
judging by the attitudes that pop-up in social media from time to time.

You would also get faster iteration time. Testing Emacs core function
would be similar to working in Emacs Lisp: eval and run; instead of
recompile and re-start Emacs just to test.

You would also unify the extension language and the implementation
language, so more people would, at least in theory, be able to look and
fix and experiment with the core. Testing a different renderer or a
different buffer implementation could become much less tedious prospect
than in C core.

Of course, it is not "just", but I would like to hear would be technical
problems, or if it is not technically possible.

As I udnerstand Common Lisp was invented to unify all the dialects such
as Emacs Lisp, and seemed to work well. I see no special technical
problems in implementing elisp in cl either, but I am not an expert and
not so familiar with CL yet, so I have hoped for some constructive input
not trolling and sarcasms.

> because Common Lisp has some drawbacks too.

Sure. Everything has drawbacks. So is life. And in life we are
constantly navigating between cost and gain.

Tell me which are drawbacks; that is actually what I am interesting
in. CL is much bigger, EL is easier to learn, that is my personal
remark, but I think it is secondary compared to what we can get with CL.

>                                              But we know the cost is
> prohibitive.

Perhaps. The cost is certainly prohibitive for a single person to do it
all on their own.

TBH I hoped for some technical input like "it is possible because of" or
this can't be done in CL because of or whatever. Instead I have got a
sarcasm and a troll answer. I should have known though better than to
answer on that one; it takes two to troll, so I guess we are both
guilty there.

That would be my answer to remark about kind communication in the latter
mail.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1590 bytes --]

On Fri, Sep 01, 2023 at 04:58:53PM +0200, Arthur Miller wrote:
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> >
> > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
> > is a non-starter.
> 
> Can we not even talk about it?
> 
> [...] "free speach" [...]

Yikes. I call Godwin on this (half-kidding).

No, seriously. I think the least you could do would be to read
on the different CL re-implementations of Emacs (I only knew
about Climacs [1], but someone in this thread posted references
to a handful) and come back explaining to us why you think none
of those have gained traction and what to try next time.

Otherwise we're bound to turn around rehashing this thing time
and again without learning anything new.

If the idea is to ramble aimlessly for rambling's sake (which
is a very honourable idea indeed), perhaps emacs-tangents would
be a better place to enjoy that.

Quite a few very smart people have come up with this idea without
knowing what happened before. Here [2], for example is Tom Tromey
"hey, let's implement Emacs in Common Lisp" from 2012, whereas
Cliki (as pointed out by some of his readers) is from... 2008.

We're all dwarfs. If we don't stand on shoulders of giants, we
don't see zilch.

Cheers

[1] https://climacs.common-lisp.dev/
[2] https://tromey.com/blog/?p=709
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
  > > is a non-starter.

  > Can we not even talk about it?

There are people who seem to be pressuring to rewrite GNU Emacs in
Common Lisp, and they kee pushing for it.  They keeo talking about the
idea, and it feels like a demand.  I get the feeling that they think
that by continuing to discuss this as if it were a real option they
hope to _make_ us take the option seriously.  That is feels like pressure.

Would those would like to discuss that plseae take the discssion off
emacs-devel?  Then it will not be pressure.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Richard Stallman wrote:

>>> Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in
>>> Common Lisp? It is a non-starter.
>
>> Can we not even talk about it?
>
> There are people who seem to be pressuring to rewrite GNU
> Emacs in Common Lisp, and they kee pushing for it. They keeo
> talking about the idea, and it feels like a demand. I get
> the feeling that they think that by continuing to discuss
> this as if it were a real option they hope to _make_ us take
> the option seriously. That is feels like pressure.
>
> Would those would like to discuss that plseae take the
> discssion off emacs-devel? Then it will not be pressure.

It sounds like you have been traumatized, almost, by such
discussion in the past, passibly?

To be fair I don't think anyone is pushing for that. It would
be to burn down the house to kill the rats.

We should rather identify advantages SBCL has over Elisp and
see if we can bridge that gap, possibly even using technology
straight from their toolbox.

As for speed I think we can conclude the native-compile
feature is the solution, but it hasn't been taken to its full
potential which is expected since it is quite new.

As for the multicore processing thing, I wonder how they
did that? And why can't we do that as well with Elisp?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Rudolf Schlatte]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> As for the multicore processing thing, I wonder how they
> did that? And why can't we do that as well with Elisp?

That is answered by the SBCL manual.  The first sentence of
http://sbcl.org/manual/index.html#Threading says: "SBCL supports a
fairly low-level threading interface that maps onto the host operating
system’s concept of threads or lightweight processes."

So race conditions resulting from multiple threads modifying Lisp data
structures concurrently are entirely the programmer's responsibility in
SBCL, to be handled by using the provided standard tools (mutexes,
locks, condition variables etc).  So if you create an application in CL,
you have to check that the libraries you use are thread-safe.  For
Emacs, where multiple applications and libraries are assembled into an
editor by the end user, instead of a programmer creating one application
to be run in isolation in an SBCL image, I believe this approach will
not work.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Rudolf Schlatte wrote:

> So race conditions resulting from multiple threads modifying
> Lisp data structures concurrently are entirely the
> programmer's responsibility in SBCL, to be handled by using
> the provided standard tools (mutexes, locks, condition
> variables etc). So if you create an application in CL, you
> have to check that the libraries you use are thread-safe.
> For Emacs, where multiple applications and libraries are
> assembled into an editor by the end user, instead of
> a programmer creating one application to be run in isolation
> in an SBCL image, I believe this approach will not work.

Since Lisp is and should be the EVERYTHING language, it is all
well and good that the programmer can do that, however - we
should aim at the other end of everythingness as well -
namely, to have Elisp do that seamlessly and on the fly so
that multicored Elisp in execution would happen whenever
beneficial also (especially) when executing normal, including
all existing for that matter, Elisp code.

However, as a first step toward that, we would indeed welcome
specific constructs, e.g.

(let-para ((one (...))
           (two (...)) )
  (compute one two) )

Where 'para' is for "parallel" and would work as this, 'one'
would be computed on CPU core 1, 'two' on CPU core 2 -
starting simultaneously and executing in parallel as you might
have guessed - and the body, in this case "compute", would be
evaluated when both are done.

How would you do that?

At least we don't have to bother with let-para* LOL

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
>   > > is a non-starter.
>
>   > Can we not even talk about it?
>
> There are people who seem to be pressuring to rewrite GNU Emacs in
> Common Lisp, and they kee pushing for it.  They keeo talking about the
> idea, and it feels like a demand.  I get the feeling that they think
> that by continuing to discuss this as if it were a real option they
> hope to _make_ us take the option seriously.  That is feels like pressure.
>
> Would those would like to discuss that plseae take the discssion off
> emacs-devel?  Then it will not be pressure.

Nobody is pressuring you or demanding anything. And those "they" are
real human beings you can address directly :).

Never mind; it is OK; I'll leave so I don't disturb the order in the
Church :-).

I wish you all best.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
  > is a non-starter.

  > It would be an enormouse job -- including rewriting the Emacs Lisp
  > Referance Manual.

Also, there are aspects of Common Lisp which i rejected as clumsy and
best avoided.  All those keyword arguments!  I intentionally excluded
tham from Emacs and I am not going to let them in.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> Also, there are aspects of Common Lisp which i rejected as
> clumsy and best avoided. All those keyword arguments!
> I intentionally excluded tham from Emacs and I am not going
> to let them in.

Certainly not indispensible but they are in, in `cl-defun'.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
>   > is a non-starter.
>
>   > It would be an enormouse job -- including rewriting the Emacs Lisp
>   > Referance Manual.
>
> Also, there are aspects of Common Lisp which i rejected as clumsy and

With all respect to you, but sound to me like an emotional argument, not
a rational one.

I don't know why you reject them as clumsy, but why does it matter to us
if a tool includes features we don't use? I don't know if I understand
it correctly, but CL was made so other Lisps can be abstracted on top of
it; so we use those features to abstract stuff on top of those lengthy
verbose functions? In other words we can hide those keyword params
behind elispy abstractions if we don't like them?

> best avoided.

Why are they best avoided? Is there some technical reason or is it
psychological?

> best avoided.  All those keyword arguments!  I intentionally excluded
> tham from Emacs and I am not going to let them in.

I don't want to be impolite, but they are already in; via cl-lib.el.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Arthur.

On Wed, Sep 06, 2023 at 07:04:43 +0200, Arthur Miller wrote:
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

> >   > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
> >   > is a non-starter.

> >   > It would be an enormouse job -- including rewriting the Emacs Lisp
> >   > Referance Manual.

> > Also, there are aspects of Common Lisp which i rejected as clumsy and

> With all respect to you, but sound to me like an emotional argument, not
> a rational one.

It's a rational argument expressed in emotional terms for simplicity.

> I don't know why you reject them as clumsy, but why does it matter to us
> if a tool includes features we don't use?

It matters a very great deal.  In practice you cannot avoid "using" these
features if you have to understand or debug somebody else's code.

> I don't know if I understand it correctly, but CL was made so other
> Lisps can be abstracted on top of it; so we use those features to
> abstract stuff on top of those lengthy verbose functions? In other
> words we can hide those keyword params behind elispy abstractions if we
> don't like them?

That's complexity and bloat.  Far better not to have them in the first
place.

> > best avoided.

> Why are they best avoided? Is there some technical reason or is it
> psychological?

It's because they are not needed.  Bear in mind, Common Lisp is a massive
language, much like C++ or PL/1 or Algol-68.  With such a language,
nobody uses all of it (it's just too big), but everybody has her own
personal subset.  This creates difficulty when somebody else has to
understand that first hacker's code.

CL is a niche language; it has not captured the hacker mindset.  I think
it is just too big and too unwieldy.

> > best avoided.  All those keyword arguments!  I intentionally excluded
> > tham from Emacs and I am not going to let them in.

> I don't want to be impolite, but they are already in; via cl-lib.el.

Yes.  There was a time not so long ago when cl.el was banned from use in
our Lisp code, except for at compile time.  Our Emacs Lisp was small,
simple to understand, and easy to learn.  Now things in cl-lib.el get
used as if they are just a normal part of Emacs Lisp.  Our language is
thus MUCH more difficult to understand, perhaps by a factor of somewhere
between 3 and 10.  When perusing even established parts of Emacs I groan
inwardly every time I encounter one of these needless cl-lib features.
It stops me dead, forcing me to consult doc strings (which are often
missing and often inadequate even when they are present) or even manuals.

Were we to rewrite Emacs in Common Lisp, these things would get worse
fairly quickly.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:

>> I don't know why you reject them as clumsy, but why does it
>> matter to us if a tool includes features we don't use?
>
> It matters a very great deal. In practice you cannot avoid
> "using" these features if you have to understand or debug
> somebody else's code.

But it is up to him/her how [s]he writes his/her code.

>> I don't know if I understand it correctly, but CL was made
>> so other Lisps can be abstracted on top of it; so we use
>> those features to abstract stuff on top of those lengthy
>> verbose functions? In other words we can hide those keyword
>> params behind elispy abstractions if we don't like them?
>
> That's complexity and bloat. Far better not to have them in
> the first place.

Not everyone is a minimalist and certainly Emacs and Elisp
allow for maximalists as well.

>>> best avoided. All those keyword arguments! I intentionally
>>> excluded tham from Emacs and I am not going to let
>>> them in.
>>
>> I don't want to be impolite, but they are already in; via
>> cl-lib.el.
>
> Yes. There was a time not so long ago when cl.el was banned
> from use in our Lisp code, except for at compile time.
> Our Emacs Lisp was small, simple to understand, and easy to
> learn. Now things in cl-lib.el get used as if they are just
> a normal part of Emacs Lisp.

They are a normal part of Emacs Lisp by definition. Check out
cl-lib.el and see if you can find any CL there. This file is
part of GNU Emacs!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > It sounds like you have been traumatized, almost, by such
  > discussion in the past, passibly?

If you have a clinical psychology degree, you might properly make
comments about such questions -- after a suitable examination a person
who agreed to be your patient

But if you are like the rest of us in not having such a degree, please
don't try to psychologize the people in our discussions.  It really is
not nice.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Richard Stallman wrote:

>> It sounds like you have been traumatized, almost, by such
>> discussion in the past, passibly?
>
> If you have a clinical psychology degree, you might properly
> make comments about such questions -- after a suitable
> examination a person who agreed to be your patient
>
> But if you are like the rest of us in not having such
> a degree, please don't try to psychologize the people in our
> discussions. It really is not nice.

You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?

I personally am not in favor of that idea anymore since speed
was the main issue and with native-compile that is solved to
a huge degree and is expected to be even better.

But what is wrong pushing for it, if some people feel that
way? It is on topic (Emacs development) and no one is forcing
anyone to read or take part in such discussions if they don't
like to. So it should be allowed, why not?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Yes.  There was a time not so long ago when cl.el was banned from use in
> our Lisp code, except for at compile time.  Our Emacs Lisp was small,
> simple to understand, and easy to learn.  Now things in cl-lib.el get
> used as if they are just a normal part of Emacs Lisp.  Our language is
> thus MUCH more difficult to understand, perhaps by a factor of somewhere
> between 3 and 10.  When perusing even established parts of Emacs I groan
> inwardly every time I encounter one of these needless cl-lib features.
> It stops me dead, forcing me to consult doc strings (which are often
> missing and often inadequate even when they are present) or even manuals.

I agree.  The use of generic functions for window system initialization
irks me to no end.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Po Lu wrote:

>> Yes. There was a time not so long ago when cl.el was banned
>> from use in our Lisp code, except for at compile time.
>> Our Emacs Lisp was small, simple to understand, and easy to
>> learn. Now things in cl-lib.el get used as if they are just
>> a normal part of Emacs Lisp. Our language is thus MUCH more
>> difficult to understand, perhaps by a factor of somewhere
>> between 3 and 10. When perusing even established parts of
>> Emacs I groan inwardly every time I encounter one of these
>> needless cl-lib features. It stops me dead, forcing me to
>> consult doc strings (which are often missing and often
>> inadequate even when they are present) or even manuals.
>
> I agree. The use of generic functions for window system
> initialization irks me to no end.

The cl-lib features are awesome, especially `cl-loop' but
other come to mind as well. It isn't much more complicated
than anything else and provides much more expressive power
to Elisp.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

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On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 01:03:28AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:

[Setting mail-followup-to, in the hopes to redirect this
thread to a more appropriate place]

> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> 
> >> I don't know why you reject them as clumsy, but why does it
> >> matter to us if a tool includes features we don't use?
> >
> > It matters a very great deal. In practice you cannot avoid
> > "using" these features if you have to understand or debug
> > somebody else's code.
> 
> But it is up to him/her how [s]he writes his/her code.

This is absolutely naïve. A language (a computer language,
too) is a communication device, and therefore inherently
a social construct.

There's always a tension (and different languages solve this
in different ways) between allowing too much width (and thus
creating different, possibly disjoint subcultures (cf. C++)
and unifying too much, thus suffocating possible creativity.

There's no (technically) "right solution" to this social
question.

In the case of Emacs Lisp, we'll have to accept that people
like Richard and Eli carry more weight in those questions
than you and me, be it because they've put orders of magnitude
more of work in there than us.

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

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On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 03:54:05AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:

[setting mail-followup-to]

[...]

> You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
> can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?

But not in such an unconstructive way. Not less here, in this
monster thread, where each argument has been hashed out three
times. Not without having done some homework.

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

tomas wrote:

>>> It matters a very great deal. In practice you cannot avoid
>>> "using" these features if you have to understand or debug
>>> somebody else's code.
>> 
>> But it is up to him/her how [s]he writes his/her code.
>
> This is absolutely naive. A language (a computer language,
> too) is a communication device, and therefore inherently
> a social construct.

What are you talking about, people are allowed to use parts of
Elisp, but not other parts like cl-lib, that makes them naive?

At the same time they are advanced enough to use the
supposedly super-complex features of cl-lib?

> In the case of Emacs Lisp, we'll have to accept that people
> like Richard and Eli carry more weight in those questions
> than you and me, be it because they've put orders of
> magnitude more of work in there than us.

Absolutely not, everyone is allowed to use Elisp in any way
they want including parts of it that Richard and Eli or anyone
else for that matter don't like, if they or someone else at
some later stage choose to maintain that same code, that has
absolutely nothing to do with it and that hypothetical
situation is something they have chosen to enter and, if so,
it is their problem if they don't like that code's reliance on
certain parts of Elisp.

#@%$&!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > But if you are like the rest of us in not having such
   > a degree, please don't try to psychologize the people in our
   > discussions. It really is not nice.

   You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
   can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?

Because the maintainers of GNU Emacs are not interested in such a push
and that it is a distracting topic.  If you wish to have a Emacs in
Common Lisp, there are plenty of other places to turn to -- for
example, Hemlock.

There is really not much more too it.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

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On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 09:23:49AM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> tomas wrote:

[...]

> > In the case of Emacs Lisp, we'll have to accept that people
> > like Richard and Eli carry more weight [...]

> Absolutely not, everyone is allowed to use Elisp in any way
> they want [...]

I'm not discussing this with you here anymore. Glad to continue
in emacs-tangents@, but I won't answer anything in emacs-devel@

Followup set.
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

>>> But if you are like the rest of us in not having such
>>> a degree, please don't try to psychologize the people in
>>> our discussions. It really is not nice.
>>
>> You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
>> can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?
>
> Because the maintainers of GNU Emacs are not interested in
> such a push and that it is a distracting topic.

Oh, you poor sweeties!

Is there anything else hundreds of Elisp programmers from all
over the world are unallowed to discuss out of concern for
a handful of dude's emotions about Common Lisp, SBCL, and the
GNU Emacs Elisp part cl-lib?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> Oh, you poor sweeties!
> ...

Please keep in mind https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html
Thanks!

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

>> Oh, you poor sweeties!
>
> Please keep in mind
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html

Please stop pushing for the disallowance of topics related to
SBCL and Emacs. It is a non-starter.

Also, please stop pushing for the disencouragement of using
the GNU Emacs Elisp features provided by cl-lib.
Also a non-starter.

One thing that can be discussed is how to get parallelism into
Emacs, to make use of modern CPU multicore architectures.

Emacs is a single-thread Lisp machine written in C, so can't
we have a multi-thread Lisp machine, using the same language?
And not by rewriting the whole thing, rather extending it to
allow for multithreading?

Didn't anyone try to do that already BTW? It feels like
a pretty basic idea and multicore CPUs have been around for
a while.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Manuel Giraud via Emacs development discussions.]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
>
>> Yes.  There was a time not so long ago when cl.el was banned from use in
>> our Lisp code, except for at compile time.  Our Emacs Lisp was small,
>> simple to understand, and easy to learn.  Now things in cl-lib.el get
>> used as if they are just a normal part of Emacs Lisp.  Our language is
>> thus MUCH more difficult to understand, perhaps by a factor of somewhere
>> between 3 and 10.  When perusing even established parts of Emacs I groan
>> inwardly every time I encounter one of these needless cl-lib features.
>> It stops me dead, forcing me to consult doc strings (which are often
>> missing and often inadequate even when they are present) or even manuals.
>
> I agree.  The use of generic functions for window system initialization
> irks me to no end.

Not Emacs related anymore, but I'd like to hear your point of view on
this matter.  It seems to me that a window system is a good candidate
for genericity.
-- 
Manuel Giraud

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Manuel Giraud <manuel@ledu-giraud.fr> writes:

> Not Emacs related anymore, but I'd like to hear your point of view on
> this matter.  It seems to me that a window system is a good candidate
> for genericity.

I was citing the use of CL generics for functions such as
`window-system-initialization', which should be replaced with a cond
switch on the value of `window-system'.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

You're quite free to discuss it, somewhere else -- for example
emacs-tangents.  emacs-devel is for the development of GNU Emacs, and
seeing that GNU Emacs has no intention of becoming Common Lisp, any
push towards that end are off-topic here.

And lets all please tone down.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2023 10:39:11 +0200
> 
> Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> 
> >> Oh, you poor sweeties!
> >
> > Please keep in mind
> > https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html
> 
> Please stop pushing for the disallowance of topics related to
> SBCL and Emacs. It is a non-starter.

As long as you don't mock your opponents or are otherwise rude, it is
allowed.  However, please be more considerate when someone asks you
not to push a topic, since just repeating the push doesn't add
anything useful to the discussion.

> Also, please stop pushing for the disencouragement of using
> the GNU Emacs Elisp features provided by cl-lib.
> Also a non-starter.

People are entitled to expressing their opinions here; that is not
"pushing".  What is and isn't acceptable to go into the Emacs sources
is not decided by expressing opinions about stylistic preferences, and
not necessarily by people whose opinions you don't like.

> Emacs is a single-thread Lisp machine written in C, so can't
> we have a multi-thread Lisp machine, using the same language?
> And not by rewriting the whole thing, rather extending it to
> allow for multithreading?
> 
> Didn't anyone try to do that already BTW? It feels like
> a pretty basic idea and multicore CPUs have been around for
> a while.

This has been discussed several times, and the current conclusion (at
least mine) is that doing that for Emacs would be tantamount to
"rewriting the whole thing", yes.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Cc: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>,  Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>,
>  Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2023 17:20:45 +0800
> 
> I was citing the use of CL generics for functions such as
> `window-system-initialization', which should be replaced with a cond
> switch on the value of `window-system'.

To be fair, that would make it harder to have each specific
implementation of the initialization functions on its own file, which
is specific for that window-system.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Ihor Radchenko]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> Please stop pushing for the disallowance of topics related to
> SBCL and Emacs. It is a non-starter.

Well. The main problem with "let's rewrite Emacs using X language" is
that it has been discussed and even attempted (for example:
https://github.com/remacs/remacs, https://github.com/emacs-ng/emacs-ng)
many times. Without success. So, I can see how raising the same topic
yet again does not look productive.

Yet, I do agree that there is no reason to _forbid_ such discussions.
But please clearly mark them under appropriate email subject, so that
people who do not want to follow them could filter out the subject in
their email client and not be bothered.

> Also, please stop pushing for the disencouragement of using
> the GNU Emacs Elisp features provided by cl-lib.
> Also a non-starter.

There is actually reasoning behind discouragement of using cl-lib in
_Emacs source code_. In particular, things like `cl-loop' that
constitute a mini-language of its own (or `pcase' for what its worth).

When such "mini-languages" are used too much, without a clear need,
people not familiar with CL conventions will have harder time to read
the Emacs source code - increased entry barrier for contribution.

Also, it is up to Emacs maintainers to decide on the preferred style
inside Emacs sources.

> One thing that can be discussed is how to get parallelism into
> Emacs, to make use of modern CPU multicore architectures.
>
> Emacs is a single-thread Lisp machine written in C, so can't
> we have a multi-thread Lisp machine, using the same language?
> And not by rewriting the whole thing, rather extending it to
> allow for multithreading?
>
> Didn't anyone try to do that already BTW? It feels like
> a pretty basic idea and multicore CPUs have been around for
> a while.

It is not as easy as you may think. Naive attempts will fail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H1Pe9HkJ7I

You can see the gory details in
https://yhetil.org/emacs-devel/871qhnr4ty.fsf@localhost
I'd appreciate if we move the discussion about parallelism there to have
a single place with all the caveats detailed and discussed instead of
scattering things all over emacs-devel.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

> Hello, Arthur.
>
> On Wed, Sep 06, 2023 at 07:04:43 +0200, Arthur Miller wrote:
>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
>> > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
>> > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>> >   > Would you please stop arguing for rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp?  It
>> >   > is a non-starter.
>
>> >   > It would be an enormouse job -- including rewriting the Emacs Lisp
>> >   > Referance Manual.
>
>> > Also, there are aspects of Common Lisp which i rejected as clumsy and
>
>> With all respect to you, but sound to me like an emotional argument, not
>> a rational one.
>
> It's a rational argument expressed in emotional terms for simplicity.

What you basicaly say: it somehow is a summarization of some more
advanced/complicated reasons which can't be explained, but have to be
expressed in the term "I don't like it" for the simplicity?

I don't think it is a rational argument, but I explicitly didn't want to
speculate why RMS feels so, but asked him to clarify for pure respect
for him as a person. You can try to teach me why is it a rational
argument and why it has to be expressed in emotional terms for
simplicity, and I promise I'll try to understand it as best as I can,
but I have hard time to see such an explanation, because the argument is
truly just an opinion.

CL for sure has things that in retrospect can be debated about, but I
don't think keyword arguments are one of those.

Also note that keyword arguments, or at least similar principle is used
in other parts of Emacs, not just cl-lib; for example look at
define-minor-mode. While define-minor-mode macro does not use "&key" as
an explicit keyword, the arguments to it are a plist which basicaly
gives you the very same effect. The "new" defvar-keymap is another
example.

Keyword arguments are undeniably useful because they let us omit
arguments we are not interested in, and type only the ones we are
interested in. I don't see how they complicate a Lisp by much; we have
&rest and &optional so what is problem having &key?

In my personal opinion it is by far more clumsy to have two defun
macros, and to prefix one with cl- for no good reason at all; and than
have to explain for users why they are two different versions, how they
differ, when they should use each, why would they like to use one or
another etc. If ordinary "defun" was simply upgraded to act as cl-defun,
potential user dilemas and explanations would be avoided.

>> I don't know why you reject them as clumsy, but why does it matter to us
>> if a tool includes features we don't use?
>
> It matters a very great deal.  In practice you cannot avoid "using" these
> features if you have to understand or debug somebody else's code.

In practice most of code will use some common part of the language, and
relatively little code will use some specialized parts. In a big
language that targets many different kind of developers, there will
always be features that are needed by some developers but not by
all. Falacy in your, by now very tired and wornout argument, is the
assumption that everyone will use everything in the language all the
time, which certainly isn't the case.

Interestingly, yesterday why commuting home after the work, I have heard
a talk by Stroustrup, quite recent just a few week old:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo-4ZSLn3jc

The talk is more or less about that very argument: why is C++ so big and
why are there so many features in c++. (If the link gets removed search
on Stroustrup C++ 2023). I think that was one of better Stroustrup's
talks, definitely worth watching.

There is also an incredibly inspirational talk by Steel (search on
"Growing the Language"); I have seen it just a few weeks ago myself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6TaiXzHAE

Observe that Steel gave us the "most minimal" and "elegant" Lisp as
Schemer's like to think of Scheme, which is probably important to
remember in the context of this discussion. If you don't watch it, the
essence is in this summary, and in my opinion is really a clever
insight:

"Over the last quarter-century Guy Steele has been convinced that trying
to design a complete and perfect programming language is the worst thing
you can do. A programming language (including its associated libraries)
must grow over time as its user community and its development community
grow. This is a different situation from 25 years ago, when all such
communities were relatively small. The difference is a problem of
scale. As a result, programming language design now and in the future is
necessarily as much a matter of social engineering as technical
engineering and must rely more on a set of general principles than on a
set of specific technical decisions."

>> I don't know if I understand it correctly, but CL was made so other
>> Lisps can be abstracted on top of it; so we use those features to
>> abstract stuff on top of those lengthy verbose functions? In other
>> words we can hide those keyword params behind elispy abstractions if we
>> don't like them?
>
> That's complexity and bloat.  Far better not to have them in the first
> place.

Complexity and bloat by which metric?

Emacs has long time ago exceeded CL in numbers of "core functions". By
the time I have extracted all Lisp defuns from the C core, a couple of
months ago or so, it was ~1800 functions in C core. That is by far many
more than what CL standard defines. I know that some of Emacs devs are
lurking on Reddit behind pseudonims, I don't know if you are one of
them, but there are also quite many users who consider Emacs to be quite
bloated and would like many of some older parts to be expunded out of
the core.

Anyway, by the nature of Lisp, there are very few actual language
concepts, and there are quite few additional concepts that CL offers
that need support of the system that are not found in Emacs; but most of
additions to the language are actually looking exactly like the language
itself. The nice thing is that, when you write a defun in Lisp, it
becomes part of the language itself, unlike languages like Java, C, C++
etc where users can not extend the language itself since the syntax has
to be encoded in the compiler. In other words, it means, that even if
you don't want it, people can extend it the way they like it, and cl.el
was a proof.

>> > best avoided.
>
>> Why are they best avoided? Is there some technical reason or is it
>> psychological?
>
> It's because they are not needed.  Bear in mind, Common Lisp is a massive

I don't know if you agree with me or not, but in order to drive from
Nuremberg to Berlin you certainly don't need AC in a car; but on a hot
summer day, with 40 degrees (celsius) it is very nice to have AC in the
car, isn't it? Sure, keyword arguments are not needed; but they are
handy from time to time. Optional or rest arguments are not needed
either, but they too are nice to have sometimes, aren't they? What
makes keyword arguments more "clumsy" then? 

To be honest to you, I really didn't want to answer this mail, because I
see just very same arguments I have seen many, many times before. I had
very much, very same sentiment about C++ as you, and I didn't even know
much of CL at all; I just thought it was big and bloated and didn't want
to use it, untill not so long time ago. Untill perhaps a year or two
ago, when I invested some time in learning more about CL and tried to
understand why things are as they are, not just in CL, but in general;
C++ very much included.

> It's because they are not needed.  Bear in mind, Common Lisp is a massiveI
> language, much like C++ or PL/1 or Algol-68.  With such a language,
> nobody uses all of it (it's just too big), but everybody has her own
> personal subset.  This creates difficulty when somebody else has to
> understand that first hacker's code.

I totally understand you; but I believe this is a bit misguided. For the
first, for the same argument as above, nobody uses the entire language
because they don't need it; not because it is too big. Some parts target
certain specialized domains which are needed by some groups and not by
everyone. I think that is more true for C++ and less for CL, because CL
is not that massive as you are trying to make it. CL is also a child of its
time, just like Emacs, and some parts are probably in need of a
revision, but it certainly stands the proof of time when it comes to
core language principles.

If we look at this:

(defun directory-files (directory &optional full match nosort count)
...)

When you call this function in the code; how easy is to remember the
order and number of arguments? Was it 5 or 6 arguments? I had fortune to
contribute the idea for the 5th argument, and yet I typed by a misstake
the wrong number:

CL-USER> (directory-files "./" nil nil nil nil 5)
; Debugger entered on #<SB-INT:SIMPLE-PROGRAM-ERROR "invalid number of arguments: ~S" {1001E92C63}>
[1] CL-USER> 
; Evaluation aborted on #<SB-INT:SIMPLE-PROGRAM-ERROR "invalid number of arguments: ~S" {1001E92C63}>
CL-USER> (directory-files "./" nil nil nil 5)
("alloc.lisp" "buffer.lisp" "callint.lisp" "callproc.lisp" "casefiddle.lisp")
CL-USER>

If I only change &optional to &key:

(defun directory-files (directory &key full match nosort count) ... )

I can now type:

CL-USER> (directory-files "./" :count 5)
("#dired.lisp#" ".#dired.lisp" "alloc.lisp" "buffer.lisp" "callint.lisp")
CL-USER> 

How "clumsy" is that? Honestly, I am not trying to be PITA or devil's
advocate or anything like that; but I think that everyone will agree
that the second one is both nicer, less error prone to type and puts
less cognitive load on users to remember or lookup the information.

Just as a remark: by just having it in CL I was able to just go to the
code, and change "optional" for "key", C-x C-e in Sly and I changed the
implementation of "directory-files", nice? For the record if you want to
try it (just a fast hack for the demonstration purpose, needs cl-ppcre lib):

(defun directory-files (directory &key full match nosort count)
  (let ((files
          (if full
              (mapcar #'namestring (uiop:directory-files directory))
              (mapcar #'file-namestring (uiop:directory-files directory)))))
    (when match
      (let ((scanner (ppcre:create-scanner match))
            matches)
        (dolist (filename files)
          (when (ppcre:scan scanner filename)
            (push filename matches)))
        (setf files matches)))
    (unless nosort
      (setq files (sort files #'string-lessp)))
    (when (and (numberp count) (> count 0))
      (when (> count (length files))
        (setf count (length files)))
         (setf files (subseq files 0 count)))
    files))

Observe also that I agree with you; keyword arguments are not needed,
but are very nice to have.

> CL is a niche language; it has not captured the hacker mindset.  I think
> it is just too big and too unwieldy.
>
>> > best avoided.  All those keyword arguments!  I intentionally excluded
>> > tham from Emacs and I am not going to let them in.
>
>> I don't want to be impolite, but they are already in; via cl-lib.el.
>
> Yes.  There was a time not so long ago when cl.el was banned from use in
> our Lisp code, except for at compile time.  Our Emacs Lisp was small,
> simple to understand, and easy to learn.  Now things in cl-lib.el get
> used as if they are just a normal part of Emacs Lisp.  Our language is
> thus MUCH more difficult to understand, perhaps by a factor of somewhere
> between 3 and 10.  When perusing even established parts of Emacs I groan
> inwardly every time I encounter one of these needless cl-lib features.
> It stops me dead, forcing me to consult doc strings (which are often
> missing and often inadequate even when they are present) or even manuals.

"MUCH more difficult" for whom in which sense?

What you are telling is that "good old times were so much better" which
is just an emotional argument. You are actually just reinforcing the
same sentiment that RMS expressed. I shared that sentiment myself, but I
think it is misguided.

We can certainly speak about "old ways", let us take the or-idiom or how
should I call it: initialization of the default value for optional arguments:

(defun foo (&optional who-am-I)
  (let ((who-am-I (or who-am-I "foo")))
    (message "I am %s." who-am-I)))

Is that really better than typing:

(cl-defun foo (&optional (who-am-I "foo"))
  (message "I am %s." who-am-I))

The user has to learn the idiom, which uses operator "or" to perform
something that visually has nothing to do with the intention of the
code, and also has to type the additional let-form each and every
time. Than the users who are not familiar with the idiom will perhaps
come up with their own version, using setq or some other thing, and you
will really have to think what the user wanted to say with their code if
you had to debug it. Is it better than seing an initialiser and knowing
directly what is the default value and everyone using uniform syntax?

There was a discussion, perhaps a couple of years ago, I think on Emacs
help list, I don't remember the detials, but I think something about
car, cdr, cdar, cddr & co, and using "nth" instead of them. Monnier said a
clever thing there: using those old functions is like writing in
assembler, but without the benefit of additional speed (something in
that sense). I think he was more than correct there. It is much more
clear to say (nth N list), than to chain cars and cdrs together.

A bit further, that really is about abstractions. We can for sure do
lots of stuff manually, without higher-level abstractions; but higher
level abstractions, like using initializer in a defun arguments, help us
convey the meaning more clearly and concize, we can rationalize about
abstractions, and they are probably easier to remember than teaching
people how to use some common pattern or idiom.

I also happened to read the CMUCL manual just yesterday. They have a
nice writing about using structures instead of lists in CL:

"Even if structures weren't more efficient than other representations,
structure use would still be attractive because programs that use
structures in appropriate ways are much more maintainable and robust
than programs written using only lists. For example:
     

    (rplaca (caddr (cadddr x)) (caddr y))

could have been written using structures in this way:
     

    (setf (beverage-flavor (astronaut-beverage x)) (beverage-flavor y))

The second version is more maintainable because it is easier to
understand what it is doing."

https://cmucl.org/downloads/doc/cmu-user-2010-05-03/compiler-hint.html#toc189

> Were we to rewrite Emacs in Common Lisp, these things would get worse
> fairly quickly.

I think you are very, very wrong about that one; on the contrary we
would get some tools that Emacs is lacking to manage the code
complexity, but I don't think they are actually applicable on the
existing code, so they don't matter much. But things certainly wouldn't
get worse. That is just my opinion of course, you can think I am an
idiot and I can be wrong, but at least give me a reason to change my
mind that isn't based on subjective opinion.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> you can think I am an idiot and I can be wrong,

I guess it won't surprise anyone that I'm such an idiot as well :-).

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Bob Rogers]

   From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
   Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2023 04:00:56 +0200

   Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:

   > Hello, Arthur.
   >
   > On Wed, Sep 06, 2023 at 07:04:43 +0200, Arthur Miller wrote:
   >> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
   > . . .
   >> > Also, there are aspects of Common Lisp which i rejected as clumsy and
   >
   >> With all respect to you, but sound to me like an emotional argument, not
   >> a rational one.
   >
   > It's a rational argument expressed in emotional terms for simplicity.

   What you basicaly say: it somehow is a summarization of some more
   advanced/complicated reasons which can't be explained, but have to be
   expressed in the term "I don't like it" for the simplicity?

It's an aesthetic argument, and I am sure we can all agree that language
design has a large and important aesthetic component.  I believe Richard
can justify leaving out (e.g.) keywords from the core language on that
basis alone.

   Mind you, I do agree with your practical arguments, and I appreciate
the references concerning the growing complexity of modern languages and
their communities.  What I think nobody has yet mentioned (and at the
risk of adding to an overlong and possibily off-topic discussion) is the
fact that the learning-curve issue should be less of a problem to the
embedded language of the "self-documenting" editor.

					-- Bob Rogers
					   http://www.rgrjr.com/

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

You are being personally offensive now.
Please stop that, and take this discussion to emacs-tangents.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:

> You're quite free to discuss it, somewhere else -- for
> example emacs-tangents. emacs-devel is for the development
> of GNU Emacs, and seeing that GNU Emacs has no intention of
> becoming Common Lisp, any push towards that end are
> off-topic here.

People are "pushing" for a zillion of things here, that the
Emacs maintainers don't like. You gonna disallow that? I don't
think so!

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Ihor Radchenko wrote:

> When such "mini-languages" are used too much, without
> a clear need, people not familiar with CL conventions will
> have harder time to read the Emacs source code - increased
> entry barrier for contribution.

If it is used in a bad way, like everything else used in a bad
way, it is bad.

But used in a good way it adds tons of expressive power to
our Elisp!

Stefan Monnier, they don't belive me. Regardless of whatever
else has been said and done, you tell them how awesome Elisp
CL is. Maybe it will land that way?

But it is true anyway.

https://dataswamp.org/~incal/vidz/misc/gaia-tuvan-sliced.webm

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> People are "pushing" for a zillion of things here, that the
> Emacs maintainers don't like. You gonna disallow that? I don't
> think so!

RMS is the Chief Gnusiance, and thus he has the authority to prohibit
certain topics from being discussed.  What are you?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>
> Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2023 14:25:12 +0800
> 
> Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:
> 
> > People are "pushing" for a zillion of things here, that the
> > Emacs maintainers don't like. You gonna disallow that? I don't
> > think so!
> 
> RMS is the Chief Gnusiance, and thus he has the authority to prohibit
> certain topics from being discussed.  What are you?

Please stop this useless and unkind line of arguing, both of you!

What is and isn't allowed here is not up to any of you.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[João Távora]

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On Fri, Sep 8, 2023, 08:35 Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> wrote:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
> > you can think I am an idiot and I can be wrong,
>
> I guess it won't surprise anyone that I'm such an idiot as well :-).
>

Count another idiot here!

>

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> You are being personally offensive now.
> Please stop that, and take this discussion to emacs-tangents.

That is unfortuante and sad if you feel that way; my intention is not to
be personally offensive; I am attacking a (bad) argument, certainly not
you as a person, nor Alan; I appologize if it comes out that way.

best regards

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

The cl libraries of Emacs Lisp define functions that are not standard
parts of Emacs Lisp.  They are not documented in the Emacs Lisp
Reference Manual -- for good reason (we don't want to write that
documentation or have a commitment to maintain ever after later).  As
a consequence, code which uses those constructs is extra work to
understand and to maintain.

Therefore, it is better to avoid using them, when that is possible.
Especially in important or central parts of Emacs.

If you want to use them in your own private code, that's no problem
for anyone else -- do what you feel like, there.  Using them in a
not-terribly-vital package that you maintain and some others use is
not a big drawback.  However, using them in code others need to
maintain makes maintaining Emacs harder.

I do not say "impossible", but it is worth avoiding.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
  > can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?

Because that is not up for decision.  That decision is already made.

If the question were up for decision, arguing for a certain choice
would be normal participation.  When it isn't, arguing for a choice is
making life difficult.  I have too much work to do, and I can't keep
up.  So does Eli.  Eli can speak for himself, but if you make it necessary
for me to spend more time on this, that is making difficulties.

It is ok to discuss these questions on emacs-tangets, because
discussing it there won't add to my burden.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:43:01 -0400
> 
> The cl libraries of Emacs Lisp define functions that are not standard
> parts of Emacs Lisp.  They are not documented in the Emacs Lisp
> Reference Manual -- for good reason (we don't want to write that
> documentation or have a commitment to maintain ever after later).  As
> a consequence, code which uses those constructs is extra work to
> understand and to maintain.

This particular aspect -- documentation -- is somewhat blurred these
days: you will find some "cl-*" functions in the ELisp manual.
(Typing "i cl- TAB" in the ELisp manual produces 5 completion
candidates.)  So we do document some cl functions when we find that
useful.

> If you want to use them in your own private code, that's no problem
> for anyone else -- do what you feel like, there.  Using them in a
> not-terribly-vital package that you maintain and some others use is
> not a big drawback.  However, using them in code others need to
> maintain makes maintaining Emacs harder.
> 
> I do not say "impossible", but it is worth avoiding.

This message is in many cases met with opposition and thus is not easy
to send in practice.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:43:01 -0400
> 
>   > You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
>   > can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?
> 
> Because that is not up for decision.  That decision is already made.
> 
> If the question were up for decision, arguing for a certain choice
> would be normal participation.  When it isn't, arguing for a choice is
> making life difficult.  I have too much work to do, and I can't keep
> up.  So does Eli.  Eli can speak for himself, but if you make it necessary
> for me to spend more time on this, that is making difficulties.

IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
(because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
their hands to pull it through.

If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
are more modern from the get-go.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

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On Mon, Sep 11, 2023 at 03:24:43PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

[...]

> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
> insist on bringing this up from time to time) [...]

What irks me most in such cases is not the idea itself, or the wish
to discuss it. It's rather that those people consistently seem to
want others to do the grunt work. Usually they seem to shy away from
looking at former attempts and trying to learn something from them.

Now this would be an interesting contribution: what's wrong with
Climacs? What's right? What went wrong with PortableHemlock and
what can we learn from it?

Heck, they even seem too lazy to take the discussion to emacs-tangents.

Huffing and puffing about freedom of expression is a bit...
strange in this context. But seems to be fashionable these days.

Cheers
-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I accept your apology, but please move that topic to emacs-tangents.
The idea of rewriting Emacs in Common Lisp is not on the table for
serious consideration.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

>> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:43:01 -0400
>> 
>>   > You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
>>   > can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?
>> 
>> Because that is not up for decision.  That decision is already made.
>> 
>> If the question were up for decision, arguing for a certain choice
>> would be normal participation.  When it isn't, arguing for a choice is
>> making life difficult.  I have too much work to do, and I can't keep
>> up.  So does Eli.  Eli can speak for himself, but if you make it necessary
>> for me to spend more time on this, that is making difficulties.
>
>IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
>time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
>insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
>the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
>but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
>a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
>internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
>the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
>(because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
>be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
>their hands to pull it through.
>
>If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
>text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
>which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
>implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
>is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
>are more modern from the get-go.

Mnjah; you know as well as I, and I have written it in the very first
mail why I want Emacs in Lisp. There are already other applications and
editors inpsired by Emacs, that is not the question. Problem with them
is they can't run Emacs applications and they don't have Emacs manual
and the well written documentation. I think it would be waste of the
effort of many people to throw it away. You may disagree and that is OK.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

>> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
>> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
>> insist on bringing this up from time to time) [...]
>
>What irks me most in such cases is not the idea itself, or the wish
>to discuss it. It's rather that those people consistently seem to
>want others to do the grunt work. 

Nobody has approached you about anything nor demanding anything from neither you
in particular or anyone else.

>                                  Usually they seem to shy away from
>looking at former attempts and trying to learn something from them.

You have no idea how much research or work I have done or not done before I have
approached malining list. Don't project your BS on me.

>Now this would be an interesting contribution: what's wrong with
>Climacs? What's right? What went wrong with PortableHemlock and

I could actually answer your questions, at least a good deal of what you ask
there if you asked in a friendly and decent manner.

>what can we learn from it?

I know what I have learned about those applicaitons as well as what I have
learned about you.

>Heck, they even seem too lazy to take the discussion to emacs-tangents.

What discussion should I take where? I am not even discussing or even looking at
anything where I am not CC:ed, I am not subscribed to any of Emacs lists. I have
sent one mail to emacs-devel and answer those I am CC:ed to; Link to the one by
Eli you have answered to was sent to me by someone.

>Huffing and puffing about freedom of expression is a bit...
>strange in this context. But seems to be fashionable these days.

And there is always mobsters and lynchmob that like to give shit to other people
to feel themselves better. You should be ashamed of yourself.

The toxic atmosphere like this is why I keep myself away from the Emacs mailing
lists in general. I posted once in about a year or more and offered a patch
and regretted it. If you think I came now just to ask you to write something for
me, think twice.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
> insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
> the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
> but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
> a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
> internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
> the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
> (because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
> be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
> their hands to pull it through.
>
> If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
> text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
> which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
> implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
> is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
> are more modern from the get-go.

I couldn't agree more.

To me, a rewrite is quatsch, while adding CL facilities to Emacs makes a
lot of sense.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[tomas]

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On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 05:51:22AM +0200, Arthur Miller wrote:

[...]

> What discussion should I take where? I am not even discussing [...]

Fine. So we agree on this one. I'm off.

-- 
t

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Po Lu]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> And there is always mobsters and lynchmob that like to give shit to
> other people to feel themselves better. You should be ashamed of
> yourself.
>
> The toxic atmosphere like this is why I keep myself away from the
> Emacs mailing lists in general. I posted once in about a year or more
> and offered a patch and regretted it. If you think I came now just to
> ask you to write something for me, think twice.

Watch your language, and take this off emacs-devel@gnu.org.  Since you
aren't even subscribed to that, this ought to be a simple matter of
editing one address within the carbon copy list.  This I have now done
on your behalf.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Lynn Winebarger]

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On Mon, Sep 11, 2023, 8:26 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:43:01 -0400
> >
> >   > You are right, absolutely, but then I cannot see why people
> >   > can't push for a SBCL rewrite of Emacs?
> >
> > Because that is not up for decision.  That decision is already made.
> >
> > If the question were up for decision, arguing for a certain choice
> > would be normal participation.  When it isn't, arguing for a choice is
> > making life difficult.  I have too much work to do, and I can't keep
> > up.  So does Eli.  Eli can speak for himself, but if you make it
> necessary
> > for me to spend more time on this, that is making difficulties.
>
> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
> insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
> the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
> but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
> a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
> internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
> the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
> (because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
> be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
> their hands to pull it through.
>
> If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
> text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
> which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
> implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
> is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
> are more modern from the get-go.
>

It sounds like you have some specific ideas.  I wouldn't mind hearing them
at more length.

My understanding is the design is deliberately kept simple (or "simple") to
make it accessible to more programmers.

Instead of discussing porting emacs to CL,  why don't people work on
porting the compiler techniques used in CL to emacs?

Lynn

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

[Redirected to emacs-tangents.]

> From: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 05:46:37 +0200
> 
> Mnjah; you know as well as I, and I have written it in the very first
> mail why I want Emacs in Lisp. There are already other applications and
> editors inpsired by Emacs, that is not the question. Problem with them
> is they can't run Emacs applications and they don't have Emacs manual
> and the well written documentation. I think it would be waste of the
> effort of many people to throw it away. You may disagree and that is OK.

It will not be a waste of effort if the "neo-Emacs" will take into
consideration the main lessons we learned during those 40 years, and
will have a different architectural design to avoid the pitfalls and
allow extensions we cannot currently support.  Reimplementing the same
design in a different language, be it SBCL, Python, Go, Rust, or
whatever -- that _is_ a waste of effort, because you will have the
same Emacs with the same basic restrictions and limitations, which are
really not expected from a modern GUI program.  We tolerate them in
Emacs because in return we get so much and because the performance is
still reasonable as long as we can live with the limitations, but
starting a radically new implementation from the same point with the
same basic design means that we will have to tolerate those same
limitations for decades in the future, and that's simply silly.  The
net result will be a huge effort, lots of work to stabilize the result
to be anywhere close to what we have now, and all that for what?

Which is why anyone who understands the internals well enough to do
the job will never do it.

Yes, this can be done in principle.  But it shouldn't.

P.S.  And don't be afraid of losing some of the applications and the
documentation -- these should be the least of your worries.  Sticking
to the same design for these reasons is ... I don't even have
civilized words to describe this kind of thinking.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[João Távora]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 5:44 AM Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> wrote:
> > If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
> > text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
> > which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
> > implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
> > is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
> > are more modern from the get-go.
>
> I couldn't agree more.
>
> To me, a rewrite is quatsch, while adding CL facilities to Emacs makes a
> lot of sense.

+1

A rewrite (or somehow the ability to embed a CL runtime to run all our
existing Elisp code) is not exactly 100% quatsch, but maybe 95%.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

Nobody is currently being very nice in this thread, and the topic has
long deveolved from anything related to Emacs.  So can everyone
_immediatly_ drop this thread, OK?

Re: Shrinking the C core

[chad]

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Now that we're in -tangets (thanks for doing that, btw)...

On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 7:57 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> [...] And don't be afraid of losing some of the applications and the
> documentation -- these should be the least of your worries. [...]
>

My own opinion has come around to match Eli's (far more relevant/expert) on
this topic, but in case it helps anyone else: I think this reflexive desire
to keep a strong hold on all the existing elisp comes from the long line of
emacs clones like Edwin, Hemlock, climacs, Alpha, and a long list of less
well-known alternatives. I "lived through" several of these, and the sense
I got from every one I actually tried was that people eventually fell back
to the "real thing" emacs, largely because it worked (well enough?) and
already had some facilities that were missing in the putative replacement.

summary: I think it's hard to unlearn this lesson from history

It's entirely possible that the shift of "typical computing" towards
massively multi-core distributed etc. is the final straw, or at least the
high bar that a massively-shared-state-lisp-machine can't vault -- while
still being good enough to cross most of the moats we see in everyday
usage. It's also possible that there's some adaptation that will arise,
perhaps along the lines of how web workers/service worker threads interact
with the DOM in the modern browser, that keeps Emacs going even longer. I
remember the days when "Yeah, that will happen shortly after the release of
Emacs 21" was the in-joke for porcine aeronautics, and we just saw Emacs 29
released, so: it could happen.

I do think that a very early step needs to be "figure out how to handle
concurrent analysis and editing across multiple cores and perhaps
machines", but that probably just reflects a bunch of my personal interests.

~Chad

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Re: Shrinking the C core

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, 13 Sept 2023 at 01:23, chad <yandros@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's also possible that there's some adaptation that will arise, perhaps along the lines of how web workers/service worker threads interact with the DOM in the modern browser, that keeps Emacs going even longer.

Actually, as far as I understand, service workers don’t interact with
the DOM. They have access to offline storage that lets them keep
state, and they can intercept requests ordinarily destined to their
origin servers and respond to them in lieu of the server.

Web workers don’t have access to the DOM either; instead, they listen
for and respond to JSON messages sent by page scripts.

So nothing new here: concurrency gets much easier when you disallow
(or vastly minimize) shared state.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: chad <yandros@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 14:22:57 -0400
> Cc: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>, emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> 
> I do think that a very early step needs to be "figure out how to handle concurrent analysis and editing
> across multiple cores and perhaps machines", but that probably just reflects a bunch of my personal
> interests.

One of the main advantages of multithreading in Emacs is to have a
separate UI thread, so that we wouldn't have Emacs appear frozen when
it does some computation.  To have such a separate thread in Emacs is
tricky, because we allow to run Lisp both on input and on output
(redisplay).  This is one of the main reasons why Emacs is so
powerful, so giving this up would be a huge loss.  So someone would
need to figure out how to keep this feature and still run I/O in a
separate thread...

Re: Shrinking the C core

[joakim]

chad <yandros@gmail.com> writes:

> Now that we're in -tangets (thanks for doing that, btw)...
>
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2023 at 7:57 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>  [...] And don't be afraid of losing some of the applications and the
>  documentation -- these should be the least of your worries. [...]
>
> My own opinion has come around to match Eli's (far more relevant/expert) on this topic, but in case it helps anyone else:
> I think this reflexive desire to keep a strong hold on all the existing elisp comes from the long line of emacs clones
> like Edwin, Hemlock, climacs, Alpha, and a long list of less well-known alternatives. I "lived through" several of these,
> and the sense I got from every one I actually tried was that people eventually fell back to the "real thing" emacs,
> largely because it worked (well enough?) and already had some facilities that were missing in the putative replacement. 
>
> summary: I think it's hard to unlearn this lesson from history
>
> It's entirely possible that the shift of "typical computing" towards massively multi-core distributed etc. is the final
> straw, or at least the high bar that a massively-shared-state-lisp-machine can't vault -- while still being good enough
> to cross most of the moats we see in everyday usage. It's also possible that there's some adaptation that will arise,
> perhaps along the lines of how web workers/service worker threads interact with the DOM in the modern browser, that keeps
> Emacs going even longer. I remember the days when "Yeah, that will happen shortly after the release of Emacs 21" was the
> in-joke for porcine aeronautics, and we just saw Emacs 29 released, so: it could happen.
>
> I do think that a very early step needs to be "figure out how to handle concurrent analysis and editing across multiple
> cores and perhaps machines", but that probably just reflects a bunch of my personal interests.

Since we are in "tangents" now, I suppose it wont harm if I add some
opinions as well.

I also tried many different emacsen, and different editors, and always
came back to the mother-ship.


The thread seemed to focus mostly on things that Emacs doesnt do so
well, and not on what Emacs does remarkably well.

For instance, the multi-tty feature is fantastic, I use it all the
time. You can use emacs on a tiny raspberry, or on a super large
machine. There is tramp, and well, the kitchen sink. And emacs is
infinitely tweakable, which is very useful. The buffer/window paradigm
is really useful.

The "new" batch of applications dont do much of the above things, so
while of course more visually apealing, they dont add much else(well of
course, LSP, and stuff, but emacs has that now as well)

So while the thread was about multi-threading, if I had a magic wand to
fix emacs things, I would fix that bother me daily.

- if I'm connected to an emacs session by ssh, and mistakenly make a
  cli command dump tens of megabytes of spewage to the shell buffer, I'm in trouble
  and cant easily get out of it. I need to open a new ssh session and
  kill the rampaging cli. This is quite tedious. Would concurrency fix this?

- Same for long-lines, this is still not a solved problem.

- Gnus refreshes slowly, maybe that could be helped with concurrency,
  but it could also be helped with more async work in gnus.

Anyway, thats my 0.02€, please ignore and carry on...


>
> ~Chad
>
-- 
Joakim Verona
joakim@verona.se

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.01 tagged_above=-999 required=6.2
> 	tests=[ALL_TRUSTED=-1, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE=-0.01] autolearn=disabled
> From: joakim@verona.se
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>,
>   emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 21:07:41 +0200
> 
> - if I'm connected to an emacs session by ssh, and mistakenly make a
>   cli command dump tens of megabytes of spewage to the shell buffer, I'm in trouble
>   and cant easily get out of it. I need to open a new ssh session and
>   kill the rampaging cli. This is quite tedious. Would concurrency fix this?

This should be doable, and doesn't come anywhere near the "rewrite"
job.  You just need a way of blocking the output from the shell, and
then use Emacs commands to kill it.

> - Same for long-lines, this is still not a solved problem.

You didn't try Emacs 29 yet, did you?

> - Gnus refreshes slowly, maybe that could be helped with concurrency,
>   but it could also be helped with more async work in gnus.

Concurrency can help you keep reading messages while Gnus refreshes in
parallel, but it won't easily help you refresh faster, unless someone
comes up with a way of collecting the update in parallel chunks (in
which case they should be able to do that today with the emacs-async
package, I think).

Re: Shrinking the C core

[joakim]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.01 tagged_above=-999 required=6.2
>> 	tests=[ALL_TRUSTED=-1, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE=-0.01] autolearn=disabled
>> From: joakim@verona.se
>> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,  Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>,
>>   emacs-tangents@gnu.org
>> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2023 21:07:41 +0200
>> 
>> - if I'm connected to an emacs session by ssh, and mistakenly make a
>>   cli command dump tens of megabytes of spewage to the shell buffer, I'm in trouble
>>   and cant easily get out of it. I need to open a new ssh session and
>>   kill the rampaging cli. This is quite tedious. Would concurrency fix this?
>
> This should be doable, and doesn't come anywhere near the "rewrite"
> job.  You just need a way of blocking the output from the shell, and
> then use Emacs commands to kill it.

That would be really great!

>> - Same for long-lines, this is still not a solved problem.
>
> You didn't try Emacs 29 yet, did you?

Well, I rebuild from master like at least once a month, so I should be
good right? But I see your point, I should come up with a more tangible
measure than claiming long lines to be unsolved. Sorry for that.

>
>> - Gnus refreshes slowly, maybe that could be helped with concurrency,
>>   but it could also be helped with more async work in gnus.
>
> Concurrency can help you keep reading messages while Gnus refreshes in
> parallel, but it won't easily help you refresh faster, unless someone
> comes up with a way of collecting the update in parallel chunks (in
> which case they should be able to do that today with the emacs-async
> package, I think).

Yes, one of these days I should really try one of the gnus-async hacks.

-- 
Joakim Verona
joakim@verona.se

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > This particular aspect -- documentation -- is somewhat blurred these
  > days: you will find some "cl-*" functions in the ELisp manual.
  > (Typing "i cl- TAB" in the ELisp manual produces 5 completion
  > candidates.)

That's few exceptions out of many cl- functions.  It seems that what I
said is still nearly 100% correct.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

joakim wrote:

>>> Gnus refreshes slowly, maybe that could be helped with
>>> concurrency, but it could also be helped with more async
>>> work in gnus.
>>
>> Concurrency can help you keep reading messages while Gnus
>> refreshes in parallel, but it won't easily help you refresh
>> faster, unless someone comes up with a way of collecting
>> the update in parallel chunks (in which case they should be
>> able to do that today with the emacs-async package,
>> I think).
>
> Yes, one of these days I should really try one of the
> gnus-async hacks.

I've heard many times that Gnus is slow, but never
experienced it. I have 6 servers and 26 groups.

How many do people have, for it to get slow?

Or is it slow for some other reason?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

>> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
>> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
>> insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
>> the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
>> but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
>> a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
>> internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
>> the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
>> (because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
>> be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
>> their hands to pull it through.
>>
>> If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
>> text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
>> which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
>> implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
>> is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
>> are more modern from the get-go.
>
>I couldn't agree more.
>
>To me, a rewrite is quatsch, while adding CL facilities to Emacs makes a
>lot of sense.

I use to say often: either CL will come to Emacs or Emacs to CL, whichever
way around. We need some of features available on CL platforms, sbcl
notably: built-in concurrency and better garbage collectors from the get-go; and
some of the CL language features, namespaces notably, would be very nice to
have. I am not sure which one is easier to achieve, porting elisp to cl, or
rewriting core to have all those features. CFFI would also be nice to have so
that users can extend Emacs themselves with other libraries and not have to wait
for the core devs to do it for them. That would also lessen the burden on
maintaining that stuff in the core.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

tomas wrote:

> Huffing and puffing about freedom of expression is a bit...
> strange in this context. But seems to be fashionable
> these days.

tomas, you can't say what you just said.

Because then I have to read it and I don't have time for that
- besides, I have already agreed with the people who share my
opinion to disagree with you. So the decision has been taken;
subsequent discussion has no meaning.

But it is okay for you to say it, just not here. Say it
somewhere else where I don't have to read it, that would be
acceptable. *generous*

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Lynn Winebarger wrote:

> Instead of discussing porting emacs to CL, why don't people
> work on porting the compiler techniques used in CL to emacs?

Absolutely, that is what one should do!

And with cl-lib and SLIME and other tools, Emacs-CL
integration has reached impressive results already.

What I understood from the previous discussion the speed
advantage for SBCL was to a large degree because of explicit
optimizations the programmer would put in the CL source.
Those are perhaps not so acute to bring over to Elisp, since
such use in an editor-environment probably would be limited.
However I think it would still be interesting and useful,
since we could use them in libraries and vanilla Emacs Elisp
source. In time, even Joe Elisp hackers would use them
directly, in their .emacs files.

Also the speed advantage (and whole issue of Elisp being slow)
is likely to diminish because of the very impressive native
compilation feature, which has showed great results while
still being at an early stage. Native compilation will also
benefit from improvements in compiler design and future
computer architecture progress.

So IIUC the only big thing SBCL has, and we don't, is
multi-threading. Bummer, but it is what it is.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

>>> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
>>> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
>>> insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
>>> the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
>>> but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
>>> a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
>>> internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
>>> the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
>>> (because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
>>> be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
>>> their hands to pull it through.
>>>
>>> If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
>>> text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
>>> which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
>>> implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
>>> is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
>>> are more modern from the get-go.
>>
>>I couldn't agree more.
>>
>>To me, a rewrite is quatsch, while adding CL facilities to Emacs makes a
>>lot of sense.
>
> I use to say often: either CL will come to Emacs or Emacs to CL, whichever
> way around. We need some of features available on CL platforms, sbcl
> notably: built-in concurrency and better garbage collectors from the get-go; and
> some of the CL language features, namespaces notably, would be very nice to
> have.

I agree.  Alas, others, who haven't seem the light yet, don't :-).

> I am not sure which one is easier to achieve, porting elisp to cl, or
> rewriting core to have all those features.

I don't know either, of course. I guess it depends on the feature.  Some
random thoughts:

I'm pretty sure that CL packages could be added to Emacs as it is, if
some people would work on it.

I'm also pretty sure that an incremental + generational GC could be
added, at least as an option, because I would have almost done it some
20+ years ago.  It was torpedoed by a patent issue concerning
mostly-copying GC.  The patent has since expired. A lot of work, of
course.  I think some people do or have done something in this area, but
I don't know details.

I'm not at all sure that non-cooperative multi-threading could be added
to Emacs.  But I'm also not sure how a CL core would help here.

On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that an Emacs core written in CL
would have to be close to 100% compatible with the existing C core to be
accepted by users.  That includes a CL rewrite of the C Elisp, including
byte code interpreter.

That's a massive endeavor.  My hair stands up when I remember the
compatibility problems I faced with the new redisplay ages ago.
Multiply that by some factor > 1.  But maybe that's a burnt child
dreading the fire :-).

I'm also not sure how a CL (not Elisp) program would look like using a
CL Emacs core.  Is it nice enough, so to speak?  Think of Emacs strings,
which couldn't be CL strings because of text properties, buffer-local
variables...

(Another ansatz might be to make Emacs C core a lib.  I haven't given
that much thought, but it could be more promising than rewriting the
whole shit in CL :-).)

> CFFI would also be nice to have so
> that users can extend Emacs themselves with other libraries and not have to wait
> for the core devs to do it for them. That would also lessen the burden on
> maintaining that stuff in the core.

FFI for Emacs once existed, I think Dave Love wrote one, for instance.
Don't know what became of that.  Might be an issue with interfacing to
non-free libs.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Richard Stallman wrote:

> The cl libraries of Emacs Lisp define functions that are not
> standard parts of Emacs Lisp.

What is the definition of standard Emacs Lisp, stuff that
don't have to be `require'd?

Because cl-lib is part of vanilla Emacs, you don't have to
install it, even from GNU ELPA or any such other
official source. It is there.

> They are not documented in the Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
> -- for good reason (we don't want to write that
> documentation or have a commitment to maintain ever after
> later).

cl-lib should of course be documented like everything else,
and it is.

But just as an experiment, I run (checkdoc-current-buffer t)
in the cl-lib.el buffer and it had 14 remarks. One could do
that for the other cl-lib files as well.

cl-lib.el:133: Argument ‘keys’ should appear (as KEYS) in the doc string
cl-lib.el:160: All variables and subroutines might as well have a documentation string
cl-lib.el:166: All variables and subroutines might as well have a documentation string
cl-lib.el:197: All variables and subroutines might as well have a documentation string
cl-lib.el:197: All variables and subroutines might as well have a documentation string
cl-lib.el:226: Arguments occur in the doc string out of order
cl-lib.el:258: Argument ‘specs’ should appear (as SPECS) in the doc string
cl-lib.el:357: Argument ‘cl-func’ should appear (as CL-FUNC) in the doc string
cl-lib.el:450: Argument ‘rest’ should appear (as REST) in the doc string
cl-lib.el:488: Argument ‘cl-item’ should appear (as CL-ITEM) in the doc string
cl-lib.el:501: Argument ‘cl-new’ should appear (as CL-NEW) in the doc string
cl-lib.el:510: All variables and subroutines might as well have a documentation string
cl-lib.el:539: All variables and subroutines might as well have a documentation string
cl-lib.el:577: Probably "returns" should be imperative "return"

GNU Emacs 30.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, cairo version 1.16.0)
of 2023-09-08 [commit a2f977d94e0356c7414876e988adedd2ab7b52f2]

> code which uses those constructs is extra work to understand
> and to maintain.

But then what are we gonna use instead of `cl-decf',
`cl-incf', `cl-labels', `cl-map' and so on?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[joakim]

Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> joakim wrote:
>
>>>> Gnus refreshes slowly, maybe that could be helped with
>>>> concurrency, but it could also be helped with more async
>>>> work in gnus.
>>>
>>> Concurrency can help you keep reading messages while Gnus
>>> refreshes in parallel, but it won't easily help you refresh
>>> faster, unless someone comes up with a way of collecting
>>> the update in parallel chunks (in which case they should be
>>> able to do that today with the emacs-async package,
>>> I think).
>>
>> Yes, one of these days I should really try one of the
>> gnus-async hacks.
>
> I've heard many times that Gnus is slow, but never
> experienced it. I have 6 servers and 26 groups.

About 700 groups, a mix of nnimap, and nntp.

nnimap is slowest. 

But its not all that slow, and Thunderbird would be equally slow I
think, and thunderbird doesnt come close organizing all thouse groups,
thats why i stay with gnus.

>
> How many do people have, for it to get slow?
>
> Or is it slow for some other reason?
-- 
Joakim Verona
joakim@verona.se

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Fraga, Eric]

On Wednesday, 13 Sep 2023 at 07:05, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> How many do people have, for it to get slow?

It's not just the number of groups etc. but also what servers you need
to access.  The latter is not specifically an issue with gnus in that
any other MUA would suffer as well; the problem is that if gnus is
taking a long time retrieving emails, I cannot do anything else in the
meantime.  Emacs is my window manager... and single threaded.

An aside: gnus' nnmaildir implementation is *very* slow under some
circumstances, to do with having to resequence all the articles in a
group.  But nnml is very good generally.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-08-14) on Debian 12.1

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Arthur Miller]

Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>>>> IMNSHO, discussing a rewrite of Emacs in _any_ language is waste of
>>>> time and energy.  We've seen this many times (because people still
>>>> insist on bringing this up from time to time).  From where I stand,
>>>> the main reason is not even the fact that we decided not to do that,
>>>> but the fact that such a rewrite will never happen in practice.  Such
>>>> a rewrite is a massive job which requires very good knowledge of Emacs
>>>> internals and features, and a lot of time.  People who come close to
>>>> the required knowledge level are not interested in doing this job
>>>> (because they understand the futility), and those who think it should
>>>> be done simply don't know enough and/or don't have enough time on
>>>> their hands to pull it through.
>>>>
>>>> If Emacs will ever be "rewritten", it will not be Emacs, but a
>>>> text-processing system with a very different architecture and design,
>>>> which will take from the Emacs experience the lessons we learned and
>>>> implement them differently, to produce a system whose starting point
>>>> is closer to the needs of today's users and whose main technologies
>>>> are more modern from the get-go.
>>>
>>>I couldn't agree more.
>>>
>>>To me, a rewrite is quatsch, while adding CL facilities to Emacs makes a
>>>lot of sense.
>>
>> I use to say often: either CL will come to Emacs or Emacs to CL, whichever
>> way around. We need some of features available on CL platforms, sbcl
>> notably: built-in concurrency and better garbage collectors from the get-go; and
>> some of the CL language features, namespaces notably, would be very nice to
>> have.
>
> I agree.  Alas, others, who haven't seem the light yet, don't :-).
>
>> I am not sure which one is easier to achieve, porting elisp to cl, or
>> rewriting core to have all those features.
>
> I don't know either, of course. I guess it depends on the feature.  Some
> random thoughts:
>
> I'm pretty sure that CL packages could be added to Emacs as it is, if
> some people would work on it.

With "CL packages" you mean namespaces? There seem to be already a
branch that implements them, but I don't know how well it works, I
haven't tried it. I think the reasoning is "with don't want them because
we have done 40 years without". But IDK for sure. If there is some
technical reason, then they could help the author to implement it the
way they like it technically.

> I'm also pretty sure that an incremental + generational GC could be
> added, at least as an option, because I would have almost done it some
> 20+ years ago.  It was torpedoed by a patent issue concerning
> mostly-copying GC.  The patent has since expired. A lot of work, of
> course.  I think some people do or have done something in this area, but
> I don't know details.

I am not very familiar wth GC:s implementation more then just some
bired-eye overview. SBCL recently started to move towards non-moving
GC to help with the speed, notably when calling native code which does
not like it's pointers moved underneath, but I am not expert on details
there, these what I have got from the paper:

https://applied-langua.ge/~hayley/swcl-gc.pdf

> I'm not at all sure that non-cooperative multi-threading could be added
> to Emacs.  But I'm also not sure how a CL core would help here.

They are exposing posix threads and have done some work to make at least
parts of the Lisp system work well with threads, and it seems it is
working well for many applicaitons.

http://www.lichteblau.com/sbcl/doc/manual/sbcl/Implementation-_0028Linux-x86_0029.html#Implementation-_0028Linux-x86_0029

I think there is also a missconception in Emacs community that Emacs
loop itself has to be parallelized; I am not sure it is needed; I think
for many people it would be enough to expose threading in form of "js
workers" or something like that. It can be done with processes of
course, but people seem to constantly scream about it in disucssions. CL
has things like lparallel and green threads built on top of hardware
threads, so even there is a bit of job already done. I am sure all that
can be done in Emacs too, but I think, both communities would be more
helped if we perhaps used sbcl and interested individuals helped make
sbcl runtime better intead of reduplication the entire effort.

> On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that an Emacs core written in CL
> would have to be close to 100% compatible with the existing C core to be
> accepted by users.  That includes a CL rewrite of the C Elisp, including
> byte code interpreter.

Yes, my conclusion too.

> accepted by users.  That includes a CL rewrite of the C Elisp, including
> byte code interpreter.

I am not sure how much of byte-interpretter is needed; I was thinking
how byte interpretter and native compiler fitt there. Oviously since
sbcl is a compiler, with don't need all that stuff, but I am not sure
how much of byte code intepretter is needed. I am sure we need to
understand all of the syntax, since byte code is a valid elisp,
according to the manual; so the reader have to be able to read the
syntax I guess, as printed representation, and has to print same stuff
back to feed into elisp functions.

> That's a massive endeavor.  My hair stands up when I remember the
> compatibility problems I faced with the new redisplay ages ago.
> Multiply that by some factor > 1.  But maybe that's a burnt child
> dreading the fire :-).

Yes, I know. I am fully aware that it is an impossibility for someone
alone, even for a very few. I don't think it is a burnt child, since
yes, the character renderer of Emacs has to be implemented if Emacs
applications will run unchanged.

Hopefully it will be possible to implement Emacs stuff as a special kind
of terminal/character renderer over some sort of tree/graph structure. I
think CLOS and CL have much better tools to refactor that stuff than C,
but what do I know, I haven't tried that and I am not sure if I will
tbh. I am bolling with the ideas. I have seen what they do in other
similar CL software (Hemlock, McClIM, Lem), perhaps there is something
that can be reused there, but I don't know how much and what yet. And,
yes text properties are a special chapter on its own :).

> I'm also not sure how a CL (not Elisp) program would look like using a
> CL Emacs core.

It would look exactly the same, that is the point :). If I wan't to be
able to run elisp applications from elpa/melpa the elisp compatibility
has to be 1:1 so to say. I think it is OK to have some "special places",
like an empty eieio.el, and bunch of aliases or compiler macros for cl-*
stuff, but in general it should be able to read an elisp file without
mofications. 

> CL Emacs core.  Is it nice enough, so to speak?  Think of Emacs strings,
> which couldn't be CL strings because of text properties, buffer-local
> variables...

Yes, buffer locals have to be implemented in CL, thanks to namespaces we
can hav a cl:string and el:string, of which el:string can be a struct
with interval and a list of properties or some other I don't know. The
hairy stuff with string properties is splitting of intervals and
properties and so on. There is much more than just those. I don't know
yet how efficient it would, I plan to test with generic functions. There
are some people testing with static dispatch for generic functions, but
I am not sure if that would work or not yet (works only for compile time
strings), I haven't had time to experiment yet.

> (Another ansatz might be to make Emacs C core a lib.  I haven't given
> that much thought, but it could be more promising than rewriting the
> whole shit in CL :-).)

Perhaps, but I don't think I personally care longer. Once you test and
learn how nice it is to be able to just eval a function and test the
change, I am not going back to hackig C again, at least not in my spare
time. Life is too short for that.

>> CFFI would also be nice to have so
>> that users can extend Emacs themselves with other libraries and not have to wait
>> for the core devs to do it for them. That would also lessen the burden on
>> maintaining that stuff in the core.
>
> FFI for Emacs once existed, I think Dave Love wrote one, for instance.
> Don't know what became of that.  Might be an issue with interfacing to
> non-free libs.

I didn't know it ever existed in Emacs. 

I though it was a political decision to not have it in Emacs. Which I
understand completely, but after seeing the recent software development,
I believe is hurting "us" much more than "them". As I said in some mail
in the context of keyword args, entire life is a struggle between
choices to maximize the gain. In this case I believe our net loss is
much bigger than gain. Interesting to note is that other GNU projects
are not have political dilemmas about CFFI, for example GCL (Gnu Common
Lisp) or GNU Guile.

I am also aware of emacs-ffi via modules:

https://github.com/tromey/emacs-ffi

But nobody seems to be using it since modules are not big thing in Emacs
community so people barey know about it. That can probably change if
someone wrote a "kille app", or in other words an interesting enough
package that uses it.

Yet another hand, that I haven't seen anywhere, would to load sbcl via
compiled module. Sbcl got ability to save itself as a loadable library,
so it would be possible to basically expose Emacs runtime to sbcl and
export some interface to work with it from within Emacs. I am not sure
if that would be a big win over current way of working via external
process and sockets, but an idea perhaps? I don't have time to try it
myself.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Gerd Möllmann]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> writes:
>> I'm pretty sure that CL packages could be added to Emacs as it is, if
>> some people would work on it.
>
> With "CL packages" you mean namespaces? There seem to be already a
> branch that implements them, but I don't know how well it works, I
> haven't tried it.

Yup, that's mine, as a pastime :-).  I have no plans with that.

>> I'm also pretty sure that an incremental + generational GC could be
>> added, at least as an option, because I would have almost done it some
>> 20+ years ago.  It was torpedoed by a patent issue concerning
>> mostly-copying GC.  The patent has since expired. A lot of work, of
>> course.  I think some people do or have done something in this area, but
>> I don't know details.
>
> I am not very familiar wth GC:s implementation more then just some
> bired-eye overview. SBCL recently started to move towards non-moving
> GC to help with the speed, notably when calling native code which does
> not like it's pointers moved underneath, but I am not expert on details
> there, these what I have got from the paper:
>
> https://applied-langua.ge/~hayley/swcl-gc.pdf

Interesting, thanks for the pointer!

>> I'm not at all sure that non-cooperative multi-threading could be added
>> to Emacs.  But I'm also not sure how a CL core would help here.
>
> They are exposing posix threads and have done some work to make at least
> parts of the Lisp system work well with threads, and it seems it is
> working well for many applicaitons.
>
> http://www.lichteblau.com/sbcl/doc/manual/sbcl/Implementation-_0028Linux-x86_0029.html#Implementation-_0028Linux-x86_0029

Yes, I remember to some degree.  I think Daniel Barlow started adding
thread support to SBCL at the time I constributed to CMUCL.  ISTR some
communiaction with him about the implemenattion of dynamic bindings in
the presence of threads.

> I think there is also a missconception in Emacs community that Emacs
> loop itself has to be parallelized; I am not sure it is needed;

Don't know what the "loop" refers to.

I think the biggest problem with uncooperative multi-threading in Emacs
is that Emacs has so much global state.  As a consequence, it's unsafe
to let two threads use anything in the C code in parallel.  Maybe one
could think of using some Python-like GIL, but that's kind of pointless,
isn't it?

> I think
> for many people it would be enough to expose threading in form of "js
> workers" or something like that. It can be done with processes of
> course, but people seem to constantly scream about it in disucssions.

Parallel worker threads have the same problem as above.  And cooperative
threads are there already, I think.

> CL has things like lparallel and green threads built on top of
> hardware threads, so even there is a bit of job already done. I am
> sure all that can be done in Emacs too, but I think, both communities
> would be more helped if we perhaps used sbcl and interested
> individuals helped make sbcl runtime better intead of reduplication
> the entire effort.

Is this realistic?  I mean how many people would be interested to do that?

>> On the other hand, I'm pretty convinced that an Emacs core written in CL
>> would have to be close to 100% compatible with the existing C core to be
>> accepted by users.  That includes a CL rewrite of the C Elisp, including
>> byte code interpreter.
>
> Yes, my conclusion too.
>
>> accepted by users.  That includes a CL rewrite of the C Elisp, including
>> byte code interpreter.
>
> I am not sure how much of byte-interpretter is needed; I was thinking
> how byte interpretter and native compiler fitt there. Oviously since
> sbcl is a compiler, with don't need all that stuff, but I am not sure
> how much of byte code intepretter is needed. I am sure we need to
> understand all of the syntax, since byte code is a valid elisp,
> according to the manual; so the reader have to be able to read the
> syntax I guess, as printed representation, and has to print same stuff
> back to feed into elisp functions.

Not sure what you are saying.  Something has to execute the bytecode,
or not?

>> That's a massive endeavor.  My hair stands up when I remember the
>> compatibility problems I faced with the new redisplay ages ago.
>> Multiply that by some factor > 1.  But maybe that's a burnt child
>> dreading the fire :-).
>
> Yes, I know. I am fully aware that it is an impossibility for someone
> alone, even for a very few. I don't think it is a burnt child, since
> yes, the character renderer of Emacs has to be implemented if Emacs
> applications will run unchanged.

(I think you misunderstoof the phrase.  I'm the burnt child...).

> Hopefully it will be possible to implement Emacs stuff as a special kind
> of terminal/character renderer over some sort of tree/graph structure. I
> think CLOS and CL have much better tools to refactor that stuff than C,
> but what do I know, I haven't tried that and I am not sure if I will
> tbh. I am bolling with the ideas. I have seen what they do in other
> similar CL software (Hemlock, McClIM, Lem), perhaps there is something
> that can be reused there, but I don't know how much and what yet. And,
> yes text properties are a special chapter on its own :).

So, your plan would be to re-implement redisplay in CL.  Good look with
that.  And a ton of other stuff, like the stuff Eli mentioned.  And the
result of the whole massive effort is then 100% compatible with current
Emacs.

That's what I call quatsch, sorry, but honestly.

Work on Lem if you like CL that much :-)

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com>
> Cc: emacs-tangents@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2023 15:03:00 +0200
> 
> I think the biggest problem with uncooperative multi-threading in Emacs
> is that Emacs has so much global state.  As a consequence, it's unsafe
> to let two threads use anything in the C code in parallel.

Indeed, that's the main problem.  Just adding threads to Lisp is easy.

> Maybe one could think of using some Python-like GIL, but that's kind
> of pointless, isn't it?

We already have that with the Lisp threads that we have in Emacs.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

joakim wrote:

>> I've heard many times that Gnus is slow, but never
>> experienced it. I have 6 servers and 26 groups.
>
> About 700 groups, a mix of nnimap, and nntp.

700 groups! Here we see the elite .se hackers at work.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Fraga, Eric wrote:

>> How many do people have, for it to get slow?
>
> It's not just the number of groups etc. but also what
> servers you need to access.

"What servers", does that mean what servers in particular or
what server types, i.e. the protocols employed?

Here are my 5 protocols and 6 servers.

nnfolder: archive                    (opened)
 nndraft:                            (opened)
    nnml:                            (opened)
  nnimap: Mail                       (opened)
    nntp: news.eternal-september.org (opened)
    nntp: news.gmane.io              (opened)

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Fraga, Eric]

On Friday, 15 Sep 2023 at 07:51, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> "What servers", does that mean what servers in particular or
> what server types, i.e. the protocols employed?

Particular servers.  Some have greater latency than others and having
Emacs hang while it waits for servers to respond can be frustrating.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via gnus (Emacs 30.0.50 2023-09-14) on Debian 12.1

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> I think the biggest problem with uncooperative
>> multi-threading in Emacs is that Emacs has so much global
>> state. As a consequence, it's unsafe to let two threads use
>> anything in the C code in parallel.
>
> Indeed, that's the main problem. Just adding threads to Lisp
> is easy.

Is there a part that is safe to access in parallel?

If not, or for the part that is unsafe, where is
synchronization of access to be done, in Lisp or in C?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2023 19:11:22 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >> I think the biggest problem with uncooperative
> >> multi-threading in Emacs is that Emacs has so much global
> >> state. As a consequence, it's unsafe to let two threads use
> >> anything in the C code in parallel.
> >
> > Indeed, that's the main problem. Just adding threads to Lisp
> > is easy.
> 
> Is there a part that is safe to access in parallel?

No.  The global state cannot be possibly accessed in parallel from two
or more threads.

> If not, or for the part that is unsafe, where is
> synchronization of access to be done, in Lisp or in C?

Both.

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Emanuel Berg]

Arthur Miller wrote:

> We can certainly speak about "old ways", let us take the
> or-idiom or how should I call it: initialization of the
> default value for optional arguments:
>
> (defun foo (&optional who-am-I)
>   (let ((who-am-I (or who-am-I "foo")))
>     (message "I am %s." who-am-I)))
>
> Is that really better than typing:
>
> (cl-defun foo (&optional (who-am-I "foo"))
>   (message "I am %s." who-am-I))
>
> The user has to learn the idiom, which uses operator "or" to
> perform something that visually has nothing to do with the
> intention of the code, and also has to type the additional
> let-form each and every time. Than the users who are not
> familiar with the idiom will perhaps come up with their own
> version, using setq or some other thing, and you will really
> have to think what the user wanted to say with their code if
> you had to debug it. Is it better than seing an initialiser
> and knowing directly what is the default value and everyone
> using uniform syntax?

This is a very good example where the CL way is simply
superior. I don't know how many ways I've seen people,
including myself, setting the default value: `or', 'unless',
`setq', `let' - or forgetting about it, for that matter.

But we do have `cl-defun' - in Elisp - so it isn't like we
don't have it for anyone to use if and when desired. I learned
about `cl-defun' much later than I did &optional but if I want
optional arguments now `cl-defun' is a much better choise than
`defun', because of the much more clear syntax to provide the
default value.

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal

Re: Shrinking the C core

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > (defun foo (&optional who-am-I)
  > >   (let ((who-am-I (or who-am-I "foo")))
  > >     (message "I am %s." who-am-I)))
  > >
  > > Is that really better than typing:
  > >
  > > (cl-defun foo (&optional (who-am-I "foo"))
  > >   (message "I am %s." who-am-I))

In Emavs Lisp you can write

(defun foo  (&optional who-am-I)
  (message "I am %s." (or who-am-I "foo")))

which is just as simple as the cl-defun method.

I have no objection to the feature of default values for optional
arguments.  It does not make code harder to understand.

The reason I did not implement that in 1984 was to keep Emacs Lisp's
implementation smaller and finish it sooner.  The latter is no longer
pertinent.  The former reason may still be valid, because implementing
this will add some coimplexity.  Is it worth its cost?  I don't know.


  
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)