Subject: Re: compiling cmulisp
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1998/10/24
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3118220356746280@naggum.no>

* Raymond Toy <toy@rtp.ericsson.se>
| However, with CMUCL, recompiling the compiler *changes* the compiler
| that's doing the compiling.  For example, there's a variable in CMUCL
| that essentially is an enum for all of the recognized types.  If you add
| a new type, such as (signed-byte 8), this needs to be placed in the enum.
| However, when you compile this up, it changes that variable in the
| compiler that's compiling the code, and the current compiler is totally
| confused by that change because it's now wrong.

  this can't be true.  COMPILE-FILE is explicitly required _not_ to pollute
  the execution environment, but (in some sense) write compiled code to a
  file for later loading.  only if you cause expressions to be avaluated at
  compile-time should this affect the execution environment.  I don't think
  anyone could reasonably be expected to do that with a variable if it has
  the effect you sketch; it's a (fixable) bug, not an inherent problem.

  (sorry for the belated response, ignore if no longer relevant.)

#:Erik
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