Yesterday while refactoring compiler-pass2 I found that moving a function from the top of the file to the bottom can cause serious performance degradation (and performance win, the other way around). That somehow doesn't feel like what one would expect of a good enough compiler these days.
To see if I can create a change to our file-compiler which doesn't exhibit this issue, I'm preparing an experiment where COMPILE-FILE will batch up all class files to be generated until the end of the processing of the input file. Then, all functions will be known in advance and calling functions being forward-referenced should have the same properties as calling backward referenced functions.
In order to be able to even start working on the above, compile-file.lisp should at least be readable and understandable. My refactoring of today is in preparation of the experiment (which I could conduct on a branch), to clean up compile-file.lisp and cut it down to readable chunks of code with well-defined calling conventions.
Just thought I'd explain my current work on compile-file.lisp.
Bye,
Erik.