Re: Emacs Lisp's future

[Mark H Weaver]

David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Bug report about basic list functionality not working for lists of more
> than 10009 members:
>
> <URL:http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=17485>

One of our procedures has a scalability problem.  Summarizing this as
"basic list functionality not working for lists of more than 10009
members" is a gross misrepresentation.

I responded within a day or so, and we had a conversation over the next
few days, but quickly ran into the problem that you wanted to change one
of our other API procedures in a non-standard way that conflicts with
our existing behavior, and you simply wouldn't take "no" for an answer.

> The proposed fix is rejected, but no alternative fix is done.

I would be glad to fix the problem myself, but I was hoping that you
would adapt your patch without changing that other API procedure, so
that you would get credit for your work.

> <URL:http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13101> is an example
> for the inability to compile large expressions on Guile-2.0.  The basic
> resume for this bug is "large expressions like that will only work with
> Guile-2.2+"

Is it really a show-stopper that Guile 2.0 has limitations in the sizes
of some expression types?  Even C has similar limitations, and yet
somehow it seems to be successful.

      Mark