News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Linux kernel in-tree Rust support by erichdongubler on Saturday July 11, 2020 @11:41AM (#23802978)
It's important to note that run-time tradeoffs were made in the interest of fast compilation speed. When it comes to optimizing code emitted from D source, it's important to leverage the alternate implementations from GCC or the LLVM-based LDC...which don't sport nearly as fast compiles as DMD, the reference D compiler.
Re:Linux kernel in-tree Rust support by crazypython on Saturday July 11, 2020 @06:31PM (#23806711)
For DMD's backend, that is true. It's like Rust's MIR project, but finished.

However, the commits I linked to describe front-end optimizations. LLVM-based D Compiler and GCC share DMD's front-end.

I've seen some generated code optimizations for DMD's back-end as well, which could get one lightning fast compiles for decent code. (Maybe in the future one could write a JIT that first compiles with DMD then tiers up to LLVM D Compiler or GCC.)

Re:Linux kernel in-tree Rust support by erichdongubler on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @09:45PM (#23854829)
You're right, I didn't distinguish between overall compile times and the front-end time taken, which is what you were focusing on. For the Rust toolchain, the (vast IIRC) majority of compilation time is in LLVM's backend. So, to me, front-end optimizations are interesting, but not the highest priority for Rust specifically. LMD seems to be a great thing to compare against, so here's my follow-up question: What's the proportion of front-end to back-end time in LMD?