Re: Using the GNU GMP Library for Bignums in Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Siraphob (Ben) Phipathananunth" <address@hidden>
> Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2018 21:15:08 +0700
> 
> Emacs Calc was written many years ago, and as a result its current
> implementation implements bignums purely in Emacs Lisp. Its bignum
> operations also use a lot of hacks (such as performing carry
> operations). Arbitrary precision arithmetic could be faster if Emacs
> had GNU GMP linked to it, with the relevant Emacs Lisp functions added
> in C.
> 
> What is the consensus on linking the GNU GMP library to Emacs so that
> packages such as Emacs Calc (and others) could benefit from using
> native types (i.e. "mpz_t") rather than reinventing the wheel?

I think the consensus is we want that, it's just a matter of someone
doing the job of making it happen.

The design should IMO be discussed up front, because we want not only
to be able to use bignums and arbitrary-precision floating-point
numbers in C, but also in Lisp.  How exactly to expose them to Lisp is
something we should talk about, I think.

Thanks.