[Ecls-list] how to build Ecl with preset higher memory bounds

[Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 9:33 PM, Raymond Toy <toy.raymond at gmail.com> wrote:

> Since that page says the limits can be set from the command line, you
> can modify the maxima script to add those parameters to the command
> line.  Or even give those on the command line to maxima.  (I forgot how
> it's done, but maxima has the ability to supply command line arguments
> to be passed to the underlying lisp.
>

I bet you meant --preload-lisp, for which I show an example below. I
misunderstood Oliver. I though he is a Maxima developer interested in
increasing the memory limits in Maxima, but now it seems it is related to
independent jobs that happen to use Maxima built with ECL.

In this case I think Oliver does not realize that the executable that they
are using is not ECL but Maxima: a standalone executable which is built by
the Maxima scripts. In other words, Maxima is not run by launching ECL with
a given image. Instead it is an independent program, a binary, built using
ECL's facilities.

Hardcoding limits in ECL or modifying the sources (options which
incidentally are in src/c/main.d) is not the answer. Will you build a
separate executable for every limits you need? What about a situation in
which those limits prove wrong? It is better to use an option which is
configurable at run-time, as ECL's runtime allows you.

One option is to execute lisp code before running your Maxima scripts. This
can be done using --preload-lisp, as shown below.

The other option would be to tweak the maxima build process to allow those
limits to be enlarged in the executable (in the end it would add a couple of
lisp statements to do the changes instead of --preload-lisp).

A final option would be to teach ECL to use environment variables for
gathering the memory limits from the command line.

Out of these, I think the first one is the best option.

Juanjo

$ cat maxima.lisp
(format t ";;; Frame stack limit ~D"
        (ext:set-limit 'ext:frame-stack (expt 2 14)))
(format t "~%;;; Binding stack limit ~D"
        (ext:set-limit 'ext:binding-stack (expt 2 17)))
(format t "~%;;; C stack limit ~D"
        (ext:set-limit 'ext:c-stack (expt 2 22)))
(format t "~%;;; Heap size limit ~D"
        (ext:set-limit 'ext:heap-size (expt 2 30)))
(format t "~%;;; Lisp stack limit ~D~%;;;"
        (ext:set-limit 'ext:lisp-stack (expt 2 18)))
$ maxima -p maxima.lisp
;;; Loading #P"/Users/jjgarcia/lib/ecl-11.1.1/sb-bsd-sockets.fas"
;;; Loading #P"/Users/jjgarcia/lib/ecl-11.1.1/sockets.fas"
;;; Loading #P"/Users/jjgarcia/lib/ecl-11.1.1/defsystem.fas"
;;; Loading #P"/Users/jjgarcia/lib/ecl-11.1.1/cmp.fas"
;;; Frame stack limit 16640
;;; Binding stack limit 131072
;;; C stack limit 4227072
;;; Heap size limit 1073741824
;;; Lisp stack limit 33849600
;;;
Maxima 5.23post http://maxima.sourceforge.net
using Lisp ECL 11.1.1
Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information.
(%i1)

-- 
Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com
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