Re: Should native compilation be enabled by default?

[Richard Stallman]

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  > > Enabling native compilation has disadvantages as well as advantages.

  > What are the disadvantages?

If Emacs compilation by default causes native compilation, it will be
slower.

It will also be more fragile.  Byte-compilation is a self-contained
Emacs feature, and aside from occasional bugs that affect specific
code, it never breaks.  On general principles we can see that native
compilation is likely to go wrong because something has disappeared,
or because of bugs in other programs that you wouldnt otherwise ever
use.

Native compilation is useful mainly for power users who want
to run Lisp programs that normally are too slow.  There is no sense
directing most users into doing things gthe complex way instead
of the simple way.

The people who participate in emacs-devel tend to be power users.
What they think is not a good guide to what is useful for most users.
To find that out, we should poll the users.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)