Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer)
Subject: Re: Lisp Compilation in Linux
Message-ID: <1997Mar5.105358.18907@wavehh.hanse.de>
Keywords: Lisp Compiler Linux
Reply-To: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de
Organization: '(a (cons tructive organization))
References: <5fi60g$gms@pelican.cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 97 10:53:58 GMT
Lines: 54

cardo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu (Ric Crabbe) writes:


>I have been doing development on a Linux box in gcl, but even
>compiled, the code is very slow.  I recently did some side by side
>experiments of gcl's compiler vs. cmulisp's compiler on a sparc &
>discovered exactly how bad gnu's compiler is. (or is it how good
>cmulisp's is?)  

Do you complain about the speed of the compiler or the compiled code?
Gcl calls the native C compiler, while CMUCL compiles in-core. If
you're after compilation speed, Gcl is not right.

What kind of code do you run?

How big is the difference? Factdor of 1.5? 3? 10? 100?

Possible solutions:
1) To optimize low-level data types, array accesses and such, use
   CMUCL's warnings to optimize the code and then run it on gcl.
2) Gcl has quite bad performance in some aspects of PCL/CLOS, because
   compilation is very slow and PCL needs the compiler at various
   optimization steps. 
3) Use the profiler to see where Gcl spends its time.

We need more input to answer your question.

>Anyway, for various reasons, I'm committed to
>developing on an Intel box, but cmulisp isn't and seems unlikely to be
>ported to that platform.  

CMUCL is available for FreeBSD and Linux/x86. In fact, it is the
platform CMUCL that is in best shape right now because most of the
active contributors use x86 boxes.

See http://www.cons.org/cmucl

>So my question is, is there another lisp I
>can use in Linux with compiler performance rivaling cmulisp?  

Franz Inc.'s Allegro for Linux. For compilation speed, Clisp isn't bad
either. 

>What
>about those Lisp to C translators?  Are they worth investigation?

Not for performance reasons, no.

Martin
-- 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Martin_Cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de http://cracauer.cons.org  Fax.: +4940 5228536
"As far as I'm concerned,  if something is so complicated that you can't ex-
 plain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway"- Calvin
