Re: gh_enter reconsidered

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu>]

perry@piermont.com writes:
> 
> Jim Blandy writes:
> > "[Guile] is slow" has a lot to do with the GC it uses.  The
> > documentation is more important, but improving the GC is still quite
> > important.
> 
> scm, though, is fast. In turning scm into guile, we slowed it down a
> lot. I think that's a pretty obvious direction to be poking in before
> we touch gc. That is not to say that I would tell people not to work
> on gc, but only that I think we know what the problems are (startup
> time, etc.) and they aren't caused by gc...
> 

Fixing the module system is about the only thing that would help more,
in my (unsupported by benchmarks) opinion. However, fixing the module
system requires more care, since many interfaces need to be
redesigned. Improving GC can, one would hope, be done without
impacting user code at all.

On the other hand - if we can agree that C-implemented environments
are the way to go for the future module system, someone could replace
the Scheme module machinery while keeping the current interface until
a better one is selected.

 - Maciej