Re: Compiling Elisp to a native code with a GCC plugin

[Wojciech Meyer]

Tom Tromey <address@hidden> writes:

> I think you can compile elisp without needing a plugin.  Just convert
> the bytecode to C, and compile that.  This is actually quite easy.

Yes, but you can't JIT it in memory, and that also builds dependency on
a C compiler.

>
> However, it is not very likely to result in a performance improvement
> right now.  A similar idea was tried and did not work out:
>
>     http://www.mundell.ukfsn.org/native/
>
> I think this idea might be worth revisiting when lexbind is merged in,
> emphasis on "might".  E.g., it seems to me that this approach might work
> ok for the recently-discussed range-map code.

Well Elisp nature is dynamic, plus dynamic scoping makes it hard to
compile, but somewhat C Lispy code *can* work faster.

>
> As I recall, in my profiles, the GC and the regexp matcher were more
> costly the bytecode interpreter (though of course this is
> workload-dependent).  If you are interested in performance, I suggest
> doing your own profiles and starting there.

Mark and sweep is no good, it would be so good if we had generational
GC... :(

>
> Tom

Thanks,
Wojciech