[sldev] LLVM?

[Kelly Linden]

In general our hopes are along the lines of:
1) LSL on mono VM (faster than lsl today! yay!)
2) Support for a specific mono language on the sims (probably C#)
3) The ability for any (or nearly any?) other languages that compile to
mono to run as scripts in SL
4) ....
5) PROFIT!

I don't know much about LLVM, but something even less "mature" than mono
is slightly scary.

 - Kelly

SL - Farallon Greyskin wrote:
> One of the things I like about the idea of using mono is that there is
> the /possibility/ of being able to use a real programming language for
> "scripting" in SL. I have NO idea if LL ever plans to allow that, but
> I sure like that glimmer of hope that it provides...
>
> LSLs current /insane/ limitations of language structure cause massive
> problems in trying to do anything complex. If scripts end up running
> 10-30x as fast (or more efficient) under mono then some REAL coding
> projects might actually be within the realm of possibility, but only
> if a real programming language is also allowed.
>
> The lack of real data structures, synchronization and even the missing
> switch statement are so amazingly irritating to work around... My ghod
> my sim for a map structure!
>
> So I would hope that any future work on replacing the scripting engine
> gives a real eye towards replacing it with something like a real
> programming language as well...
>
> Farallon
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Argent Stonecutter"
> <secret.argent at gmail.com>
> To: "Second Life Developer Mailing List" <sldev at lists.secondlife.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2007 8:49 AM
> Subject: [sldev] LLVM?
>
>
>> I wonder if the LLVM might not be a better way to handle future 
>> scripting needs than Mono. Modifying the existing LSL compiler to 
>> generate LLVM code wouldn't be hard at all: LSL is a stack oriented 
>> language, and that's one of the provided front ends.
>>
>> This wouldn't be a short term project, but it would be something to
>> consider for future implementations. LLVM isn't as mature as Mono, 
>> but it's also a lot smaller in scope and a lot of the scope of Mono 
>> includes a lot of stuff that you simply don't need in a simulator... 
>> and it's being used by a number of companies that are doing things 
>> much more like scripting a simulator than implementing a general 
>> purpose OS. LLVM is a "pluggable" compiler environment like Tcl is a 
>> pluggable interpreter environment.
>>
>> Personally, as a compiler guy, I find http://llvm.org/docs/
>> Stacker.html quite exciting. You could possibly plug the LLVM basic 
>> blocks directly into indra.y and have it generate code directly.
>>
>>
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