[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #64977] Explore options for the bytecode interpreter in Octave 9

[John W. Eaton]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #64977 (project octave):

My preference is that we should do at least option 1.

I'd really prefer at least option 2 plus keeping the optional compilation on
the default branch.  I don't think this feature belongs on stable and in a
release yet, even if compilation is disabled by default.  I'll take a look at
making those changes next.

If we think that there is a good possibility that the bytecode interpreter
won't be ready for Octave 10 either, then we should probably move it to a
feature branch so we can avoid facing this problem again in another year.

I'm attaching the changes I've made for option 1.  When I'll push them to
stable and merge with default when savannah is working for me again.

The first change restores the --disable-bytecode-evaluator configure option.

The second skips compilation of bytecode evaluator code unless
OCTAVE_ENABLE_BYTECODE_EVALUATOR is defined and also makes it so that
OCTAVE_ENABLE_BYTECODE_EVALUATOR is not defined by default.

When I merge to default, I'll omit the changes to configure.ac from the second
changeset and arrange so that the bytecode evaluator is still compiled by
default on the default branch.

Note that even on the stable branch with the bytecode evaluator disabled,
functions like __vm_enable__  are defined but they produce errors like


error: __vm_enable__: support for byte-compiled functions was unavailable or
disabled when Octave was built


because doing that was easier than dealing with the documentation system. 
Likewise, I inserted guards in all the affected files instead of removing them
from the lists of files to compile because it was easier than trying to figure
out how to skip compilation of the files and still ensure that they are
included in tar files created by "make dist".

Also, if we had used a feature branch for these changes then this wouldn't be
an issue for the release because the changes would only be on the feature
branch and so would not have appeared on stable when we merged default to
stable for the release.


(file #55401, file #55402)

    _______________________________________________________

Additional Item Attachment:

File name: bytecode-disable-1.txt         Size:4 KB
    <https://file.savannah.gnu.org/file/bytecode-disable-1.txt?file_id=55401>

File name: bytecode-disable-2.txt         Size:71 KB
    <https://file.savannah.gnu.org/file/bytecode-disable-2.txt?file_id=55402>



    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64977>

_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/