| Perhaps Tobias Kunze can fill us in on how long it takes to
 | load an enitre CommonMusic image in MCL.

i can.  Typically, creating an image is a two-step process.  The
first pass compiles and loads all the files in a particular order.
Since compilation creates a lot of temporary garbage in the symbol
tables, you then want to quit your lisp and, in a second pass,
simply load the compiled files and dump the new application (a double-clickable
lisp memory image).  Currently, there is no way to just
load source files (without compiling them), although that could be
done easily.  Since MCL compiles *everything* it evaluates anyway, this
would be (except for the junk it creates) identical to an image that
has been built from binaries.  However, it takes much longer to build.
Bottom line, i would say you *want* the file compiler.

On a PPC, loading the binaries is *very* fast (~1 min or less), but
compiling (the first pass) may take up to 5 or 8 minutes, depending
on your memory situation.


-Tobias

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______________________________________________________________________

Tobias Kunze                       t@kunze.stanford.edu
CCRMA, Stanford University         http://www.stanford.edu/~tkunze