Re: a plan for native compilation

[Andy Wingo]

Hi,

On Fri 16 Apr 2010 22:47, No Itisnt <address@hidden> writes:

> One option I am really starting to like is LLVM. I know what you're
> thinking, huge memory consumption, giant dependency, etc, but it's so
> cool! It supports every desktop architecture too.

It's quite attractive! However I don't think it's the right thing for a
GNU project to use, especially one such as Guile that sits so low in the
stack.

It's a shame that GCC has not been able to support LLVM's level of
innovation, but perhaps that will change over time. The thing that's
clear to me is that it would be nice to use other parts of the GNU
toolchain for Guile's native compilation, but the LGPL/GPL thing makes
that a bit more difficult to think about -- and then there's the fact
that much of it is expressed as standalone binaries rather than
LLVM-like libraries.

Definitely something to think about, though, over the next 6-12 months:
how best to reuse existing work when thinking about AOT and JIT
compilation for Guile.

Andy
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