Re: wip-rtl, solstice edition

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> skribis:

> Yes I see what you are saying.  It was only recently that things came
> together enough to be testable at all (to have the circle between
> assembler, linker, and loader).  However, the instructions themselves
> are fairly well documented; do see
>
>   
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git;a=blob;f=libguile/vm-engine.c;h=3f575880d5210a1ab5bd4a28b429a0807864be43;hb=refs/heads/wip-rtl#l941
>
> So for this purpose, writing tests should be possible.  WDYT?

Yes, probably.

>> Seriously though, that seems like a good plan.  I wonder what Noah’s
>> attempts at JITing the 2.0 bytecode would have achieved, though, if we
>> think of both JIT and the new VM as an “interim solution” before AOT
>> native compilation.
>
> It would have been possible but not ideal.  Rewriting the VM to
> e.g. have fixed-size stack frames, only two virtual registers, separate
> debugging information, statically allocate constants, etc. would still
> be necessary, and at that point a refactor to the VM would be more
> difficult.

Yes, good point.

And it’s true that the work on ELF and DWARF is definitely valuable for
the future.

Thanks!

Ludo’.