Re: v5.5.640 plans

[Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@activestate.com>]

On Wed, 05 Jan 2000 16:13:16 PST, "Benjamin Stuhl" wrote:
>From: Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@ActiveState.com>
>>   * round out Compiler support additions (save END blocks; write a small
>>     testsuite and driver for it; investigate bugs reported so far)
>
>I've been toying with a module to give perl-level access to PL_beginav, 
>PL_initav, PL_soptav, and PL_endav for an idea I had on how to trim the size 
>of bytecompiled programs (perl -MO=Bytecode -e 'print "Greetings, 
>mortals!\n";' is ~600K with 5.5.63). I've been seeing if converting 'use's 
>to INIT blocks when under PL_minus_c would do it, and it seems to. If I can 
>get it to work, I'll send in a patch. Oh, also - would it be ok for me to 
>turn PL_minus_c into a set of flags (PERL_COMPILEONLY | PERL_BYTECOMPILE, 
>for instance?) so that different backends can enable different changes to 
>the compilation process?

Is there a need for that kind of state to be kept in the guts?
Given that the back ends use the API presented by the B:: namespace,
I think those sort of flags might be best kept as part of B.

>>   * round out documentation
>>      - perldelta upkeep (see TODO markers)
>>      - ensure new stuff in perldelta is documented elsewhere
>>      - rework API listing to reflect the current canonical form
>>
>
>One thing: I've been musing over the API, and the fact that some of it seems 
>(to me) to be things that noone really has any business using 
>(Perl_boot_core_UNIVERSAL, Perl_find_script, most of the Perl_do_*'s, etc.) 
>Would it be acceptable to remove them from perlapi.c and global.sym, 
>declaring them to be internal to perl and off-limits to anyone else?

Certainly.  One of the latent ideas behind embed.pl was to eventually add
a flag to mark the public parts of the API, and autogenerate
L<perlguts/"API LISTING"> from function headers in the source files.
This would be a nice, self-contained, and easy(!) project for someone to
tackle.

Thanks.


Sarathy
gsar@ActiveState.com

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References to:

"Benjamin Stuhl" <sho_pi@hotmail.com>

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