Re: Blockers for Guile 2.2

[David Kastrup]

Jonas Hahnfeld via Discussions on LilyPond development
<lilypond-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I'd like to discuss what are considered blocker issues for a switch to
> Guile 2.2.
>
> After the release of 2.23.6, there were reports of major problems on
> Windows, namely that the binaries were broken when extracted with the
> Windows Explorer (#6281) and that file names with special characters
> didn't work (#6282). I think I found solutions for both of them, either
> already merged (!1194 for #6281) or in review (!1219 for #6282).
>
> The second large topic was performance of the binaries with Guile 2.2,
> which we know will be worse without compiled bytecode. In
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2022-02/msg00099.html
> Jean writes
>> [Guile bytecode for LilyPond's .scm files] should be added eventually
> before we make a full switch.
>
> I don't fully agree and think that bytecode compilation shouldn't block
> the switch. In my opinion, it would be fine for the next development
> releases to be somewhat slower if that results in Guile 2.2 being
> available sooner.

That is not as much a speed issue as an stability issue.  The byte
compilation caches are not robust across updates and downgrades since
they are based on file names.  If our own scm files are not installing
with their individual set of .go files, the installations bleed over
into the user domain and remnants may cause problems.

-- 
David Kastrup