guile-vm 0.5

[Keisuke Nishida]

I've checked in the latest snapshot of my VM.

Current status:

* Nearly any Scheme files can be compiled.
  The current module system is supported.
  `defmacro' and `define-macro' are supported.
  `define-syntax' is not supported yet.

* SLIB works (somehow).  Use (guile slib) module.

* Some of Guile's standard library (ice-9) can be
  compiled and executed.  The compiler is now partially
  self-compiling.

* There are several known bugs.  The VM and the compiler
  are not very optimal yet.  It is not ready for real use.

Anyway, I can now benchmark the load speed of the VM.
The following is the test program:

  (use-modules
   (ice-9 buffered-input) (ice-9 calling) (ice-9 common-list)
   (ice-9 debug) (ice-9 debugger) (ice-9 documentation) (ice-9 emacs)
   (ice-9 expect) (ice-9 format) (ice-9 getopt-long) (ice-9 hcons)
   (ice-9 lineio) (ice-9 optargs) (ice-9 poe) (ice-9 popen) (ice-9 rdelim)
   (ice-9 regex) (ice-9 session) (ice-9 stack-catch) (ice-9 streams)
   (ice-9 threads))

Result with the source files:

  % time guile -s load-test.scm

  real  0m0.820s
  user  0m0.780s
  sys   0m0.040s

Result with compiled files:

  % time guile -s load-test.scm

  real  0m0.607s
  user  0m0.590s
  sys   0m0.020s

Result without loading modules:

  % time guile -q -e quit

  real  0m0.207s
  user  0m0.200s
  sys   0m0.000s

So, the speed up is about 30%.  Hmm, not very much.
I guess I have to use a different module system to
gain further speed up.

Keisuke