The pbc-backref branch is complete in terms of features and passes fulltest and rakudo-spectest. It is my intent to merge this immediately after the release. This is well encapsulated from nearly everything, so there are no expected difficulties, however, please run whatever tests you feel are appropriate.
Background information: Currently, in master, only PMCs within the same constant's object graph are stored as references on subsequent encounters. pbc-backref adds another type of reference which allows the format to refer to objects previously encountered in the object graph of other constants within the same constant table. This gives tremendous improvements to code making use of namespaces, nested subs, and lexpads. FWIW, this change is also completely backward-compatible with the current PBC format. Here are some of the improvements this branch brings: * rakudo perl6.pbc size: 65% smaller * rakudo hello-world machine instructions: 23% fewer * rakudo repl RSS: 33% less * parrot opsc.pbc (typical nqp program) size: 15% smaller moritz++ also reports that rakudo spectest is noticeably faster, however I have been unable to reproduce anything beyond roughly a 10% improvement (still feels downright glacial to me). _______________________________________________ http://lists.parrot.org/mailman/listinfo/parrot-dev
