clasp next steps ? speed-up ?

[Markus Krummenacker]

Christian Schafmeister writes:
 > Hey Markus,
 > 
 > You will have a better debugging experience if you use Slime.
 > 
 > We should talk and I’ll give you a better update as to where Clasp is wrt optimization and debugging.  It’s kind of a complex picture that is changing rapidly.  In a nutshell:
 > 
 > 1) I’m incorporating inlining and a new compiler as we speak and this should produce a large improvement in performance.

hi chris,

so having 2 compilers floating around does create the puzzle of where
exactly improvements should be made.  i should probably pick something
to do that will survive the transition from one compiler to the
other...



 > 2) The debugging experience is mixed and should be improved
 > soon. I’m incorporating a new compiler but it generates no
 > debugging information at the moment.  I’m adding DWARF debugging
 > support so that we can debug using gdb or lldb.

i know nothing about dwarves, but if such debug info could be used on
the lisp side as well, maybe i should study that a bit.  (though it
will probably take me quite a bit of time to digest.  i don't want to
prevent other people from investigating this as well.)


 > 3) On freenode there is a #clasp chatroom - could you drop in and I can update you on where things are?

quite frankly, i have no idea how to use irc chat.  i did use firefox
to visit the freenode website, and i seem to have joined #clasp, but i
don't know how i would type anything,  it does not do anything for me,
and i don't see any activity.  maybe it is also getting late on the
east coast.

anyways, my cultural preference generally is towards "traditional"
email and mailing-lists, that are properly archived, and where
communication is asynchronous.

i would think explanations regarding what glue holds clasp together
these days would be of broad interest on the mailing list too, instead
of just the presumably ephemeral irc channel.

-- 
--
Regards
Markus Krummenacker




 > Best,
 > 
 > .Chris.
 > 
 > 
 > 
 > On Jun 14, 2015, at 5:17 PM, Markus Krummenacker <kr at AI.SRI.COM> wrote:
 > 
 > > after a few more hickups, i finally succeeded in building clasp, on
 > > linux.
 > > 
 > > one thing i wonder is how to get a stack backtrace, if there is a
 > > break.  just interacting at the prompt just seems to return to the
 > > prompt, flushing the error, like this:
 > > 
 > > 
 > >> (+ 2 'b)
 > > 
 > > Debugger received error of type: SIMPLE-TYPE-ERROR
 > > In lisp_errorUnexpectedType ../../src/core/foundation.cc line 163
 > > COMMON-LISP:TYPE-ERROR :initializers (:DATUM B :EXPECTED-TYPE COMMON-LISP:NUMBER  )
 > > 
 > > Error flushed.
 > >> 
 > > 
 > > 
 > > that'll make it difficult to get to the bottom of various issues.
 > > 
 > > 
 > > also, drmeister, you wanted me to look into speeding up clasp.
 > > but i'll need some pointers on how to get started on this.
 > > 
 > > it would be good if there were a rough "how to optimize" guide
 > > available.  is there a worked out example for me to look at ?  which
 > > function/file ?
 > > 
 > > and could you please assign one of those open tasks to me ?  it will
 > > probably take some time for me to chew on, but i'd prefer to work on
 > > something that doesn't duplicate what other people might be working on.
 > > 
 > > thanks.
 > > 
 > > -- 
 > > --
 > > Regards
 > > Markus Krummenacker
 > > 
 >