From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Mark H Weaver Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel,gmane.comp.gnu.lightning.general Subject: Re: Bug free programs Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:27:41 -0400 Message-ID: <8738brsz82.fsf@yeeloong.lan> References: <20140917005748.8CXVB.21497.root@cdptpa-web03> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1410924605 1904 80.91.229.3 (17 Sep 2014 03:30:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:30:05 +0000 (UTC) Cc: lightning@gnu.org, guile-devel@gnu.org To: Ian Grant Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Sep 17 05:29:59 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1XU5wK-0007yG-M6 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 17 Sep 2014 05:29:56 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:41888 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XU5wK-0006Ef-9J for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:29:56 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:49846) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XU5wC-0006Dl-7U for guile-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:29:52 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XU5w7-0005Jv-HI for guile-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:29:48 -0400 Original-Received: from world.peace.net ([96.39.62.75]:46198) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1XU5w7-0005Ip-DL; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:29:43 -0400 Original-Received: from c-24-62-95-23.hsd1.ma.comcast.net ([24.62.95.23] helo=yeeloong.lan) by world.peace.net with esmtpsa (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1XU5vm-0007nI-QE; Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:29:22 -0400 In-Reply-To: (Ian Grant's message of "Tue, 16 Sep 2014 21:22:18 -0400") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 96.39.62.75 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:17463 gmane.comp.gnu.lightning.general:587 Archived-At: Ian Grant writes: > On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 8:57 PM, wrote: >> Note that the 42 minutes here is a dumbed-down scheme interpreter >> written in C building/boostrapping the compiler. The guile compiler >> (the Scheme one) is quite a bit faster than that. > > I know, but it's not necessary. Guile could take the scheme code which > implements the efficient compiler, and just print out the C code > (which JIT compiles the machine code) implementing that bytecode > compiler. Are you suggesting that we compile our Scheme code to C, include that in our distribution, and then users would start by compiling that (non-source) C code? If so, I'm surprised to hear you suggest that, given your concern over Thompson viruses (which I share, incidentally). A Thompson virus could be hiding in this intermediate C code that would be very hard to audit. I, for one, am very glad that unlike many self-hosting compilers, Guile is bootstrapped entirely from source code, with just one exception: psyntax-pp.scm is generated from psyntax.scm, but it's fairly close to the source code and quite readable. Incidentally, I put a great deal of effort into making sure it was readable. > See the thunder.pdf I sent when I first proposed this idea: > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2014-08/msg00064.html If you want me to read it, can you please email it as plain text? Mark