Re: Guile 2.2 speed improvements

[David Kastrup]

Paul Morris <address@hidden> writes:

> By chance I came across the following blog post about Guile 2.2, apparently
> it's due out later this year.
>  
> http://wingolog.org/archives/2013/11/26/a-register-vm-for-guile
>
> Most of it is technical and above my head but the summary is that it should
> be significantly faster:  "A simple count-up-to-a-billion test runs in 9
> seconds on Guile 2.2, compared to 24 seconds in Guile 2.0."  I thought I'd
> share it, in light of recent discussion about performance/speed.  
>
> Looks like good things ahead.

GUILE2.2 from master takes eternities to compile, like more than half an
hour or so.  LilyPond does a lot of on-the-fly evaluation, and Guile2.0
is already a big step backwards in that department compared to Guile
1.8.

If they don't get compilation and partly interpreter speed under control
again (and it does not look like a priority to them since they are more
interested in competing on the basis of compiled code speed), the main
usability focus will be _not_ as an extension language but rather as a
main programming language.

That makes it cheaper swapping out some of our C++ parts for GUILE.  But
where performance is paramount, we are not likely going to do this
anyway.

So we'll have to see whether we are getting any tangible benefits here.

-- 
David Kastrup