Re: on native compilation

[Nala Ginrut]

On Sun, 2013-09-01 at 13:12 +0200, Andy Wingo wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> We have a bit too much on our plates ATM to think about native
> compilation.  However, "what's the plan" is a common question.  So here
> is a tentative plan.  Sometime after 2.2 settles down would be the time
> to look at it.  It would probably be Guile 3.0.  Dunno.
> The way to do it is to refactor compile-rtl.scm / assembler.scm /
> disassembler.scm to emit and disassemble native code instead.  We get to
> keep lots of parts of the existing compiler though: the ELF linker, the
> constant allocator, all the metadata-related things (both on the
> compiler and runtime side).  In this way it's a less brusque change than
> the one from the stack VM to the RTL VM.  A first crack at the problem
> would not do register allocation and would just emit code for each VM
> op.  Later we could do proper register allocation.
> 

Alright, so that means we'll do all the arg-passing work with stack at
very beginning. I think it's a fair choice for such complex compiler
stuffs.

> It's probably easiest to have a native-only system rather than a mixed
> native+VM system, as that way you would just have one stack.  We'd keep
> the VM around of course -- it's just that a given build of Guile would
> either be VM-based or native, chosen at build-time.  There's lots of
> stack-related questions to sort out.
> 

I'm glad to see AOT would be optional for users, since many users need
portable objcode.

> Anyway, that's a pseudoplan.  

Thanks for the working! ;-)

> 
> Andy