Progress toward making the bytecode compiler deterministic, so that a
fresh `make base` always produces exactly the same bytecode from the
same sources. Most changes involve avoiding hash-table order
dependencies and adjusting scope identity. The namespace used to load
a reader extension is also better defined. Plus many other little
changes.
The identity of a scope that is unmarshaled from a bytecode file now
incorporates the hash of the file, and the relative order of scopes is
preserved in a bytecode file. This combination allows compilation to
start with modules that loaded and compiled in different orders
(including delayed loading of bytecode fragments within one file).
Formerly, a reader extension triggered by `#lang` or `#reader` was
loaded in whatever namespace happens to be current. That's
unpredictable and can pollute a module build at the level of bytecode.
To help make builds deterministic, reader extensions are now loaded in
a root namespace of the current namespace.
Deterministic compilation in general relies on deterministic macros.
The two most common ways for a macro to be non-deterministic are by
using `gensym` (use `generate-temporaries`, instead) and by using an
unsorted hash-table traversal (don't do that).
At this point, bytecode generation is unlikely to be completely
deterministic, since I uncovered non-determinism mostly by iterating
attempts over the base collections. For now, the intent is not to
provide guarantees outside of the compilation of the base collections
--- but "more deterministic" is likely to be useful in the short run,
and we can improve further in the long run.
2661d46929