Re: Portals and Sandboxing

[Michael Ikey Doherty <michael i doherty intel com>]

On Thu, 2014-01-02 at 18:03 +0100, Maciej Piechotka wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-01-02 at 15:22 +0000, Michael Ikey Doherty wrote:
> > Hello,
>
> Hi,
>
> (...)
>
> Quick introduction: I'm working mainly on libgee library but recently
> I've started looking on how to improve Vala performance (including
> custom passes in llvm).
Many respects, libgee I have much time for :)
> > Given that JavaScript is prototyped and seemingly ill-suited to
> > GObject-Introspection, perhaps Vala needs re-evaluating. A logical step
> > might be to introduce Vala bytecode, and finish optimisation on the
> > target computer. This could be achieved using llvm/clang.
>
> This is not so easy ATM (although quite conceivable in principle) - the
> assumption of compilation to C is used through the Vala stack - not only
> codegen would need to be rewritten but also handling of VAPI files would
> need to be rethink (usage of macros etc.).
>
> My guess would be that there is likely similar project for clang which
> we could piggyback on - the problem faced should be similar and Vala
> would not get a new codegen. FIXME: How does 'portable' backends such as
> Emscripten and PNaCL handle it? Do they limit themselves to 32 bits/use
> custom system headers?
I think you're right, avoid the codegen changes. AFAICT a lot of
bytecode assemblers/translators go with one *or* the other. So convert
all to 64-bit or stick to 32-bit completely (I think some JS compilers
do 32-bit only)
> On the other hand it offers interesting possibilities once we JIT the
> Vala code and allow for cross-module inlining.
I also believe it opens a lot of scope for new developers. The language
itself is awesome, a distribution method of using it would be essential
to "apps".

- Ikey
> Regards


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