Re: Making --with-wide-int the default

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 10:11:49 +0100
> 
> Also the cell size doubles, so the Lisp data structures take more
> memory.  I think it is quite reasonable _not_ to use wide ints by
> default on architectures with a 32-bit address space.  Everything takes
> up more memory, the maximum of virtual address space is something like
> 3GB anyway so it's not like you could hope to increase the amount of
> stuff you could be editing all that much: it is more likely that with
> several buffers loaded at once, you'll _decrease_ the overall amount of
> stuff you can keep loaded into buffers at the same time.

I think the much large buffer size limit is more important than these
considerations.  (Your fears about decreasing the buffer size are
unfounded: I actually tried using 1.5GB buffers, and it worked every
time).  And there's a configure-time switch to not use wide ints for
those who think otherwise.

So on balance, I think it's an improvement.  If I'm wrong, we have the
pretest to indicate that, and we can always turn it back off by
default if needed before the release.