Re: Guile Startup Time Suggestion

[Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>]

I'm reading back over old mail, and I can't remember whether I posted
on this helpfully, or just sarcastically...

Guile's slow startup time is due, at least in part, to fixable
inefficiencies in the interpreter, and in the run-time environment ---
notably, the module system.  They are also due to poor structure in
boot-9.scm, introduced in an attempt to work around what I think are
weaknesses in the module system.

In other words, it's not good code simply doing a lot of work --- it's
bad code doing a small amount of work.  There's nothing intrinsic in
what we're trying to do that takes that long.

So I don't think we need to resort to measures like Guile daemons or
compiling boot-9.scm, yet.  We should fix the obvious problems, and
then see whether we still care.