Re: Native compilation on as default?

[Andrea Corallo]

Colin Baxter <m43cap@yandex.com> writes:

>>>>>> brickviking  <brickviking@gmail.com> writes:
>
>     > On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 15:28, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote
>     > (in part):
>
>     >> Building Emacs with native compilation is a lot more fragile than
>     >> without.  Meanwhile, many users don't need it because Emacs is
>     >> fast enough for us without it.
>     >> 
>     >> Theefore, we should not enable native compilation by default.
>     >> 
>
>
>
>     > To add to what RMS has stated, I'm on an older machine with not a
>     > lot of room left on the primary partition. I understand that's on
>     > me, but I wanted to add my notes about my local experience.
>
>     > I compiled Emacs as a test with AOT turned on, and found that it
>     > started creating *.eln files. Lots of them. I recompile Emacs on a
>     > fairly regular basis, and after one compile/install of Emacs, I
>     > noted at least an extra 40Mb after about an hour's running with
>     > erc, org-mode and ef-themes (amongst others). On my older 2008-era
>     > machine that's starting to really show its age, the extra .eln
>     > files were not really worth it for me. I wish I had better news,
>     > I've been wanting a sped-up emacs for a little while now. To be
>     > fair, I _thought_ I saw a speed increase in what amounts to
>     > display code, but I'm not a programmer, mainly a user.
>
>     > Is there a facility to purge out-of-date versions of the .eln
>     > files for a version that is installed later, and is that facility
>     > easy enough to look for via C-h f? This might make native
>     > compilation easier to swallow.
>
>     > Regards, brickviking (Emacs 29.1.90, GTK3, Linux-x86_64)
>
> I would like to second this. I too run old machines - 15 years old , but
> still giving good service. I have tried native compilation on one, and
> noticed only the presence of a large number of extra files with no
> change in performance. I'm not a developer and don't do anything fancy
> on emacs.
>
> Po makes a very good point. I compile from git and only one machine has
> the necessary library (or libraries?)
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Colin Baxter.


Hi Colin,

again, the proposal (see original message) is to have it on by default
*only* when libgccjit is available.  I bet you don't have it installed
on those machines as AFAIK the only SW in production that uses it is
Emacs.

BR

  Andrea