[Compiler-sig] changes to ast

[Mark Hammond]

[Jeremy]
> Do you have specific performances goals that could be addressed?

Nothing too specific ATM.  However, my compiler is woefully slow.  The
profiler shows that roughly 1/2 the time is spent in COM (talking to .NET)
and the other half is in the AST transformation code.

I identified some hotspots in my code, but was still left with these rough
ratios.  I didn't really look into the AST code, just noted the fact I
should ;-)

Some of the time spent in COM will be Python's fault, but much of it will be
.NET doing its thing, creating the DLL, doing its "assembly" step, etc - so
the AST code would appear to offer the most potential.

> What kind of tree does the Wing IDE code produce?  I saw the
> announcement, but haven't had time to look at it.

I am in the exact same boat - I have no idea either.

However, I should mention the big advantage to me of keeping the compiler in
.py code is the potential for the compiler to compile itself.  Once this
happens, we can support eval, exec, etc.  The more .py code the better for
this goal.

Mark.