[erlang-questions] HiPE/+native builds of OTP stuff?

[kostis@REDACTED]

Scott Lystig Fritchie wrote:
> 
> Has anyone done testing with HiPE/+native compilation of OTP libraries
> such as stdlib or Mnesia or fill-in-the-blank (heh, like 'cprof')?

I am not sure this qualifies as "testing", but as part of the HiPE testsuite, we are continuously (i.e. several times a day) testing the compilation of all OTP files to native code.

We know of no problems in doing so, other than the fact that some 'megaco' files take forever to compile.

> Are there any reasons why someone should/should not do such a thing?

The main reason why this might not be a good idea is that it is very difficult (impossible?) to debug native compiled code and the crash dumps that one gets are not so detailed as the ones when running BEAM bytecode.

> After all, the out-of-the-box OTP builds don't do it, nor is there
> a "--hipe-compile-everything" option for the "configure" script....

Perhaps it is a good idea to add this option.  Thanks for the (implicit) suggestion.

Kostis