Re: Rewriting make-docfile.c in Lisp?

[Spencer Baugh]

Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> writes:
> Why would one want to write it in Lisp anyway?
>
> We have a working program in C which requires little maintenance, yet
> which is used continually.  Rewriting it in Lisp would be _work_.

I was making a change and found it quite difficult.  I think it would be
much simpler to change if it was in Lisp.  I admit that since it's
rarely changed, it may not be worth it.

> Also, the Lisp version would run more slowly than the C version, leading
> to more irritation over build speeds than there currently is.  I think
> this is also part of the build which holds things up in a single core,
> thus making its speed more important than, say, a C or Lisp compilation.

A rewrite in Lisp could also take the opportunity to add parallelization
and speed it up, if indeed this is a bottleneck for the build.