maiko: Fate of NATIVETRAN

[waywardmonkeys]

NATIVETRAN is described as:

 NATIVETRAN  If true, code to support the native-code translator is
 included in the emulator.  This feature was never released,
 and most such code is probably obsolete.

There's some code involved here, like src/loader.c which doesn't compile and hasn't in a while. (If you fix a couple of the missing headers, you quickly run into further changes...)

There's also this from src/subr.c:

#ifdef NATIVETRAN
    case sb_LOAD_NATIVE_FILE:
      POP_SUBR_ARGS;
      /* to become OBSOLETE */
      {
        TopOfStack = dynamic_load_code(args);
        break;
      }
#endif

There's also all of inc/native.h, which isn't included or used anywhere.

It looks like this has some complications spread through the code, never worked, never shipped, and even in the old comments, is noted as obsolete.

[masinter]

Native Translation (transforming sequence of byte codes to native code) isn't on the path to any of our various goals. The only reason to do it would be performance, which isn't the point and there are lots of ways it wouldn't work out.
Transforming to little-endian and 64-bit pointers would be a lot easier. Nuke it.

[waywardmonkeys]

This has been removed on the Maiko side of things.

[waywardmonkeys]

FYI: @nbriggs

But this isn't as easy as just removing things that are #ifdef NATIVETRAN ... there's a bunch of pieces here and there that aren't covered by an #ifdef.

[nbriggs]

It's also the case that removing it isn't really on the path to finding the other problems, so while removing the hooks may be a worthy goal in the longer term I don't think it's near the top of any priority list.

[masinter]

i converted this from an Issue to a Discussion in the "implementation history" category, following the principle that Issues should be reserved for things that are acdtionable, that someone could self-assign and make progress on, and other things are Discussions of general topics or trying to come up with policy. At lease that is how I read the intention of the feature.