Re: build optimizations

[Sam Roberts <vieuxtech@...>]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 5:24 AM, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo
<lhf@tecgraf.puc-rio.br> wrote:
> Here are two points on the build process that we'd like your input on:
>
> 1. The Makefile assumes gcc. So we might as well use all gcc-specific flags
>   to get a better Lua core and interpreter, for some definition of "better".
>   For instance, -fomit-frame-pointer seems to generate smaller and faster
>   binaries, but a Lua library compiled with -fomit-frame-pointer might not
>   be debuggable. Is this really a bad thing? Or will anyone needing to debug
>   the Lua library add the source code to the project and thus not rely on
>   whatever pre-built Lua exists in their system? What gcc-specific flags
>   should we use if we go that way?

I'd suggest either continuing with a build target per platform, where
there is a vanilla
target that does not assume gnu chain (just cc, ld, ar), or else bit
the bullet and put
a real build system in.

I dislike autotools as much as anybody, but it works, makes it easy
for packagers, and there are enough people on lua-l familiar with
autotools and/or cmake
to maintain a working build.

It might even be worth doing something sqlite-like: one release with
split source and minimal
gcc only Makefile, and the community does a follow-on parallel release
with amalgamated
source, and a build system friendly to packagers.

I appreciate that the lua build system as-is allows a great deal of
flexibility to packagers... but it
is often unwanted and unused, and packagers might nott know enough
about lua to choose
correct build flags.

> 2. The file all.c (aka one.c) allows Lua to be built as a single object file,
>   and allows the compiler to generate better code and with just the Lua API
>   as public symbols. We are considering building Lua in this way, so that
>   liblua.a will consist of a single object file. Does anyone see a drawback
>   to this?

I like this idea, making this the default build. It works well for
sqlite (which is also built for similar target environments as lua).

Sam