Xavier Leroy wrote:

>Generation of spill code is a dark corner of compiler construction.
>As with many other compilation problems, there are a bunch of
>NP-completeness results.  Unlike many other compilation problems, I'm
>not aware of any published heuristics that works well in most cases.
>Well, there is the paper by George and Appel where they use an ILP
>solver (integer linear programming) to produce optimal spills, but
>that's kind of expensive...
>  
>

It is my impression that users of compilers are "ready" for the 
following situation:
1) an optimizing compiler (like ocamlopt!) that produces good code 
efficiently
2) a super-optimizing compiler that produces fantastic code, at whatever 
cost.

Such a compiler would probably rapidly find a niche of fervent users. 

Jacques