Re: [Axiom-developer] Boot

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

root <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

| BOOT requires that you insert a translation step into every
| file you process which causes you to require ADDITIONAL stanzas in
| the makefiles. 

in the various incarnations of my local version interp, converting
from Boot to Lisp is handled by a generic rule:

   .PRECIOUS: %.boot
   .PRECIOUS: %.clisp
   %.clisp: %.boot
          $(BOOT_TO_LISP)

[...]

| Boot inserts the translation step between you and the lisp top-level
| loop, making debugging "one step removed".

Well, I have no need to debug at the lisp level. :-)

| Boot is written in boot.

I'm sure many Lisp implementations are written in Lisp.

| Which means that if you change it you
| have to re-translate the lisp code used to bootstrap it and re-insert
| it into the files (see btincl2.boot for instance).

This has not proven be a problem to me.  If you look at the
build-improvements, you'll notice that it now has a full-three stage
bootstrapping for Boot -- the only thing we don't do at the moment is
to compare the generated lisp.

[...]

| Boot constructs translate into inefficient, time and space poor
| list-based code constructs. 

yes, but that is not an inherent inefficiency

[...]

|                                                   We will have to again
| automate the check to ensure that we don't quietly break the world.

Anything that can be automated should be.

| This isn't apparent (yet) because no-one codes in boot.

but, wait for a week or so :-)

[...]

| Make it into a real, documented, standalone language or kill it.

I believe we all agree that noone wants an undocumented language that
runs forever.  This holds for Boot, SPAD, etc.

-- Gaby