Moritz Lenz wrote:
But I fear that optimizations are a risky business, considering our rather low test coverage (and considering that we don't really know how much of our code paths are actually covered by tests).
In that case, perhaps Rakudo should have a config or compile-time (of Rakudo itself) option where it can be run either without or with any compile-time optimizations, where said optimizations have any changing the runtime behavior. This being under the assumption that a Rakudo codebase that doesn't support the optimizations is simpler and easier to prove correct or debug than one with them. Users suspecting a bug when they run with the optimizations could rerun without them to see if there's a difference.
This idea isn't without precedent. I believe that Parrot has long had multiple run cores, such as ones with JIT or certain optimizations versus ones without. Or maybe this was an early development that later went away?
-- Darren Duncan
