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"Byte-code compilation is an underdocumented — and in the case of the recent lexical binding updates, undocumented — part of Emacs" "People do not write byte-c
by gravypod 10y ago
"Byte-code compilation is an underdocumented — and in the case of the recent lexical binding updates, undocumented — part of Emacs"
"People do not write byte-code; that job is left to the byte compiler. But we provide a disassembler to satisfy a cat-like curiosity."
If I was an emacs fan I'd be weary of this. What happens if the devs are hit by busses? What happens to emacs? No documentation means very little stability.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoThat was one of the argue points in some of the recent emacs-devel drama about the object dumper.
- ffggvv 10y agoThat's true for a lot of software. Do you use any SaaS? That's the worse.
- espadrine 10y agoStatistically, death is not the danger. I can't think of a single case where a heavily relied-on project caused major issues from a handful of deaths. On the other hand, developers losing will… The loss of Gmane, for instance, caused major link breakage for months.
- gravypod 10y agoThe only SaaS I use personally are websites I visit. I host my own ownCloud, file storage, contact backups, and when I move into my new place I'll be setting up my own email server as well. Edit: If you consider DNS as SaaS then I also use that but I don't need it internally for my network to function so I won't call it a dependancy.
- wangchow 10y agoSource code is the ultimate documentation. ;)
- gnuvince 10y agoI've started doing literate programming these past two months, and I have to say that I believe this statement less and less.
- db48x 10y agoThis page is actually pretty good high-level documentation for the system. Between it and the source code you'll have little difficulty. Of course, if you have Emacs you'll presumably also have the manuals. Chapter 16 of the Elisp manual seems pretty thorough.
- barrkel 10y agoBytecode is not a novel idea and I wouldn't expect it to be difficult at all to map the well-known concepts to the particulars of the Emacs implementation. Documentation of source code is often overrated IMO. Most software isn't difficult to understand if it's at least somewhat well-structured - and when the structure is poor, documentation doesn't help much. It's usually the application domain that's hard to understand, because that's where global invariants and assumptions live. (Don't get me wrong: documentation of module boundaries is great, particularly if there are many users of the module, up until you get to APIs, where documentation is essential for a decent experience. Documentation of the innards of software, not so much.)
- imglorp 10y agoIt was probably a novel application when it was first implemented in emacs 1985-ish (going by the bytecomp.el header comment by JWZ). First editor bytecode? First lisp bytecode? First interpreter bytecode? O-code predates it by a couple decades for general purpose compilation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-code
- barrkel 10y agoThe context of my comment is of course in maintaining the source - the comment I was replying to was concerned with bus numbers. By the time it was implemented for emacs, many, if not most CS students would have been familiar with p-code as used for UCSD Pascal etc.
- abecedarius 10y agoPeter Deutsch published a paper on a compact Lisp bytecode in the 70s, http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp-d/Deutsch-3IJCAI.pdf/view http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp-.... IIRC the Smalltalk-80 bytecode was pretty similar, descended from Smalltalk-76.
- kazinator 10y agoThe cell counts seem to be off by one in the Appendix examples (REVERSE and SUBST lambdas). I count 35 and 40 conses, respectively. :)