Re: My Guile TODO list

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Andy,

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:
> On Wed 07 Mar 2012 20:53, Mark H Weaver <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> I occasionally talk about my large Guile TODO list, and sometimes people
>> say that I should put it somewhere public.  Okay, here it is (not
>> including my ticked messages in Gnus).  It includes some items that are
>> probably controversial, especially near the end, and I'd rather not get
>> stuck in huge threads about those ideas right now, so please just take
>> this for what it is: a place where I record tentative ideas so they
>> won't be forgotten.  Honestly, I'll be lucky if I find time to do a
>> small fraction of this stuff :)
>
> IMO it's a really great list for Guile itself.  There were very few
> things that I would comment on, but they are all small points, and
> anyway, there's no need to nitpick such a generosity as this list :)
>
> If I were to add one point from my side, it would be native compilation.
> I think it's what we need to take Guile to the next level of
> expressiveness, speed, and good memory use.  I think we should probably
> tackle the register VM first, though, along with using ELF as the format
> for bytecompiled Scheme, allowing static, shareable access to
> constants.  That would also produce more compact code, as debugging data
> would move to a separate section.

I agree.  "Native compilation" is such an obvious goal that I forgot to
put it on the list, but I think about it almost every day.  Some of the
items near the end of my TODO list implicitly assume that native
compilation will be implemented first.

    Thanks,
      Mark