Re: compiled lisp file format (Re: Skipping unexec via a big .elc file)

[Paul Eggert]

Ken Raeburn wrote:
> The Guile project has taken this idea pretty far; they’re generating ELF object 
> files with a few special sections for Guile objects, using the standard DWARF 
> sections for debug information, etc.  While it has a certain appeal (making C 
> modules and Lisp files look much more similar, maybe being able to link Lisp 
> and C together into one executable image, letting GDB understand some of your 
> data), switching to a machine-specific format would be a pretty drastic change, 
> when we can currently share the files across machines.

Although it does indeed sound like a big change, I don't see why it would 
prevent us from sharing the files across machines. Emacs can use standard ELF 
and DWARF format on any platform if Emacs is doing the loading. And there should 
be some software-engineering benefit in using the same format that Guile uses.