Re: Lisp files that load cl-lib in problematical ways

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Andrea Corallo <acorallo@gnu.org>
> Cc: stephen.berman@gmx.net,  incal@dataswamp.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 18:02:52 -0400
> 
> So I did some experimentation (scratch/comp-run branch) where I splitted
> the code needed to run the (async) native compiler at runtime into a
> separete file (comp-run.el).
> 
> I think it's a good change as:
> 
> 1- instead of loading almost 6000 lines of compiler only code
>    (comp.el+comp-cstr.el not including dependencies) a normal user now
>    has to load only ~500 LOC.  The rest will be loaded only by the async
>    workers.
> 
> 2- it is conceptually correct to divide the code needed at runtime from
>    the one necessary to actually compile.
> 
> 3- at the first startup on my configuration only gv.el gets native
>    compiled!

Sounds good to me, thanks.

> Limitations so far are that:
> 
> 1- if any of the async compilation will have to report a warning,
>    warnings.el will require icons.el that will still require cl-lib.el.

I don't see this as a significant problem.  Here's my data point: I
use desktop.el to save/restore my production sessions, which tend to
be large, so when a new version of Emacs starts, I have more than 200
packages natively-compiled in the background during the first 2
minutes, and not a single warning emitted.  Granted, those are all
bundled packages, but why shouldn't we expect third-party packages to
live up to the same standards?

And in addition, users can always turn off the warnings if loading
cl-lib bothers them.

> 2- if cl-lib.el and other dependencies of the native-compiler are not
>    native compiled because of some other package gets loaded, they might
>    stay bytecode.  In this case the native compilers running in
>    background _might_ have some performance degradation.  I guess is
>    more theoretical than practical but we might want to have a look
>    before committing.

Doesn't happen here: I see that cl-lib is natively-compiled in the
very first group of files compiled after Emacs starts.