The real problem with relying on Scheme48 is that even if some brilliant
person wanted to implement a hot new VM with all the features to save
virtual memory, they couldn't. The damn thing is written in Pre-Scheme and
for all I know there's a small cabal (of 1?) who have the Pre-Scheme
compiler.
A first step to getting better virtual memory behavior would be getting a
VM written in Bigloo, Gambit, or Scheme->C. Then you could monkey around
with the function representations to let you use mmap and others of that
ilk to bring code into the image without this misguided (IMHO) compile an
image to C stuff.
Alternatively, one could wait for PreScheme to become a system that
is useable by general programmers, and then directly hack the S48 VM.
Ian Horswill told me he was able to use the PreScheme compiler for
his stuff, so it may already be the case that you can hack the S48 VM.
I don't have the cycles right now to even think about doing it,
so I haven't looked into it.
-Olin
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