Ian Grant <ian.a.n.gr...@googlemail.com> writes: > On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 8:57 PM, <dsm...@roadrunner.com> wrote: >> Note that the 42 minutes here is a dumbed-down scheme interpreter >> written in C building/boostrapping the compiler. The guile compiler >> (the Scheme one) is quite a bit faster than that. > > I know, but it's not necessary. Guile could take the scheme code which > implements the efficient compiler, and just print out the C code > (which JIT compiles the machine code) implementing that bytecode > compiler.
Are you suggesting that we compile our Scheme code to C, include that in our distribution, and then users would start by compiling that (non-source) C code? If so, I'm surprised to hear you suggest that, given your concern over Thompson viruses (which I share, incidentally). A Thompson virus could be hiding in this intermediate C code that would be very hard to audit. I, for one, am very glad that unlike many self-hosting compilers, Guile is bootstrapped entirely from source code, with just one exception: psyntax-pp.scm is generated from psyntax.scm, but it's fairly close to the source code and quite readable. Incidentally, I put a great deal of effort into making sure it was readable. > See the thunder.pdf I sent when I first proposed this idea: > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2014-08/msg00064.html If you want me to read it, can you please email it as plain text? Mark
