Re: Compilation to native

[Matthew Mundell]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

> Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> > I don't think that a speedup of less than a factor of 2 would be worth
> > installing something that might take substantial maintenance effort.
>
> Hmm, I expected more speedup given that it compiles to machine code.

I expected less, given that the generated code does mostly what the
compiled byte interpreter does, saving only on the time taken to loop
through the byte code.

> Anyhow, while jit compilation of Emacs bytecode to native code would
> be a far-reaching goal, the most urgent issue is with CCL programs.
> Currently, CCL programs are unbearable slow.  For example, opening
> a 10MB UTF-8 file on a fast machine takes 5 min, while opening it
> without conversion is performed instantly.

I only wondered why the TODO entry favoured CCL, as it was simpler to
try the byte code first.  The changes to function calling required for
the compiled byte code would count towards a similar effort for CCL.