Re: Making --with-wide-int the default

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
>> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
>> Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 10:11:49 +0100
>> 
>> Also the cell size doubles, so the Lisp data structures take more
>> memory.  I think it is quite reasonable _not_ to use wide ints by
>> default on architectures with a 32-bit address space.  Everything takes
>> up more memory, the maximum of virtual address space is something like
>> 3GB anyway so it's not like you could hope to increase the amount of
>> stuff you could be editing all that much: it is more likely that with
>> several buffers loaded at once, you'll _decrease_ the overall amount of
>> stuff you can keep loaded into buffers at the same time.
>
> I think the much large buffer size limit is more important than these
> considerations.  (Your fears about decreasing the buffer size are
> unfounded: I actually tried using 1.5GB buffers, and it worked every
> time).

"with several buffers loaded at once".  If buffer size was so much of a
concern, we could represent integers like XEmacs does (basically with a
single tag bit), allowing for buffers of 1GB size.  When the maximal
virtual memory size is something like 3GB, I don't think we'd be missing
out on much.  People wanting to edit files of several gigabyte size
regularly will not be using a 32-bit userland these days anyway.

-- 
David Kastrup