Re: srfi-18 and the vm

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello,

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> For loading uncompiled scripts, things will be slower, unless your
> modules #:use-syntax some other transformer. I don't know where the
> tradeoff is between the increased expansion speed due to compilation and
> slowdown due to a complete codewalk, but it's certainly there.

Yes.  Likewise, it may be reasonable to assume from now on that most of
the code will be compiled.  For instance, an uncompiled script may just
be a small code snipped that uses mostly compiled code.

> OTOH I would suspect that we can implement some kind of just-in-time
> compilation -- essentially for each use-modules we can check to see if
> the module is compiled, and if not just compile it then and there. It
> would be a little slow the first time, but after that it would load much
> faster, even faster than before. Python does this. We could add a guile
> --no-comp option to disable it.

I don't like this idea because it implies implicitly letting Guile
fiddle with the user's file system.  OTOH, it's a pragmatic approach to
the problem at hand.

Thanks,
Ludo'.