Some performance notes

[Andreas Raab]

Rob -

> I do a fair amount of work with cygwin and gcc as well, so I'm not partial 
> to any particular tool; I just happened to start with MSVC. But after 
> seeing these numbers, I'll definitely have to switch over to a gcc build.

Don't get spoiled. There is no reason why you would have to compile a 
*plugin* with GCC (unless you like it). If I remember our last conversation 
correctly, then there wasn't any intrinsic need for a VM modification (is 
this still correct?) so you might be better off with an external plugin 
(compiled with whatever) and the stock VM.

Cheers,
  - Andreas