Re: [Chicken-hackers] slow polling

[felix . winkelmann]

> > Does it have to be fixed in Chicken 4 at all?
>
> Not necessarily, but I figured that since the scheduler hasn't changed
> much between the two versions, if we have a fix for 5 it can be applied
> to master without too many changes as well.  This goes for several
> improvements that have been suggested, like inlining locative-ref,
> better reuse of argvectors and so on.

But backporting can be done afterwards, and even just if requested.
Development on 4 should be phased out, IMHO, excepting critical
security issues, of course.

>
> > I think every effort should put into getting Chicken 5 ready.
>
> You're right on one hand, but on the other we also have to remember that
> people are still using CHICKEN 4 in production.  For example, the
> argvector change was applied to master for that reason.  The debugger
> was added to master, and so on.  It will be a while before we will be
> able to release CHICKEN 5 even if we do put all our efforts into it.

Indeed. But it will take even longer if two variants are maintained in parallel.
The debugger was isolated enough to be developed for both 4 and 5 (and
also to give it some exposure to find bugs).

> Besides, right now what needs to happen on CHICKEN 5 is not very clear
> to me.  For example, I have no clue what the status is on the new setup
> langauge, and the namespace changes are being worked on by Evan and I
> don't want to get in his way.  However, I'd be happy to pick up any
> boring work that "just needs to be done", as long as it's clear what
> needs to happen.  Inspiration is lacking for me right now.

I might be interested in the setup stuff, but it will take time, of course
(it's quite some work to get this working on Windows + UNIX,) Evan's
work and the setup stuff are the most critical parts to get something up
and running. The next step would be THE SYSTEM... how about investigating
this?

>
> > The current pace is insane and will not be sustainable forever. Let's
> > get 4.11 out and then turn to new things.
>
> Yes, I absolutely agree that 4.11 should be released as soon as we can.
> I'll consolidate the NEWS file, merge into the prerelease branch and
> announce a release candidate before the end of this week.

Excellent.


felix