Subj : Problems building SpiderMonkey in release mode, MSVC.NET 2003
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : "Alan Kemp" <alan@alankemp.com>
Date : Fri Feb 13 2004 10:41 pm

Hi,

[I'm using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003]

Wanting to put SpiderMonkey through some speed tests I rebuilt in release
mode.  The build process completed successfully, although I noticed the file
jsinterp.c took an inordinate amount of time to build (roughly 2 minutes,
compared to under a second in debug mode).

Dropping the release .lib/.dll in over the debug ones I rebuilt my test
application, only to find a most bizarre problem.  When calling from c to
scripts with no parameters every thing works great, however if the script
function takes arguments execution stops with a message

"script.js (13) ReferenceError: a is not defined"

Where "a" was the function argument.

Putting back the debug .lib/.dll and it all started working again.
Recalling the long build time for jsinterp.c I went back to the SpiderMonkey
project and turned off all optimizations for that specific file (leaving
every thing else with normal release settings).  With this done the new
..lib/.dll files work perfectly again.

To eliminate my code from the equation I just tried jsshell:

* DEBUG BUILD *
js> function printme(a) { print(a); }
js> printme("hello world")
hello world
js>


* RELEASE BUILD *
js> function printme(a) { print(a); }
js> printme("hello world")
1: ReferenceError: a is not defined
js>


My first question would be, has anyone else seen this behaviour?  I am
assuming this is going to turn out to be a compiler specific issue, in which
case the solution is going to involve using a different compiler...

Any thoughts?

Alan

.