Re: Should native compilation be enabled by default?

[Andrea Corallo]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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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.

I don't see why native compilation should be more complex for users,
AFAIK is transparent.

Anyway as a data point: AFAIK major distros decided since a while to
ship with native compilation as (I assume) they deemed it beneficial for
their users.  I believe they even did it *before* native compilation
went on by default (on system with libgccjit installed) in our
configure.

  Andrea