Re: Emacs contributions, C and Lisp

[Perry E. Metzger]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2015 05:38:11 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 17:20:40 -0600
> > From: Jacob Bachmeyer <address@hidden>
> > Cc: address@hidden
> > 
> > Which leads to another idea that I think may have been
> > mentioned:  Does Emacs have the ability to load C plugins from
> > shared objects?
> 
> Why would we need that?  We _are_ the Emacs project, so we could
> simply make whatever C code is needed part of Emacs.
> 

Well, one reason might be to permit extensions to be written that the
Emacs developers didn't think of/aren't part of the main
distribution/etc. One might also want to allow a minority of
users to have large binary add-ons without forcing *all* users
to pay the cost of loading those add-ons in memory.

Perl, python and some other systems allow for libraries with native
binary components. In some sense, Emacs is a language (elisp) with an
editor attached, so the idea isn't *entirely* mad.

That said, I'm not sure the case for it is a slam dunk, either.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger                address@hidden