Re: Emacs Lisp JIT Compiler

[Robert Pluim]

Ergus <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi!
>
> Sorry for the bother, but I am very interested in this kind of features!
>
> I have 2 simple yes/not questions:
>
> 1) Any progress in the JIT work?

Depends what you mean by progress. As far as I can tell the
feature/libjit branch compiles and runs OK.

> 2) Do you think we will see it soon in the next release or year for example?
>

Schedules are variable. Help appreciated :-)

> And an extra if you have some more time to reply.
>
> 3) I saw that the option to translate Lisp code into C and compile it is
> not considered; but I couldn't understand why and how is it better to
> use libJIT than a native compiler+binutils. Lisp-c or equivalents could
> work to distribute all the emacs internal functions already compiled but
> maybe the advanced users could enable it as an experimental feature for
> his own functions (with some configuration). Also consider the
> pedagogical value of this translator's code and the potential use cases.

Translating the lisp code into C requires the presence of a C
compiler/linker, so itʼs something that can be done by an emacs
developer, but someone using a pre-compiled emacs would not
necessarily have those tools installed. With libjit everybody would
get the benefit.

Of course, you could do both: compile the lisp shipped with emacs into
C, and support libjit, although the last time I looked at
el-compilador it didnʼt support elisp fully yet.

Robert