Perhaps switch to pointers for matrices and vectors #29
Description
I got an email recently with some bechmarks. The long and short is: once you get to Mat4 size, it is a significant speed improvement (about 13 ns/op for multiplcation) to use a pointer for Mat4. This is a significant API change and would break a lot of existing code. Doing
m := mgl32.Ident4()
m[0] = 5
Would break. Any code that currently uses any of: At and Set for matrices or X, Y, Z, or W for vectors is safe (SetX and the like would likely needed to be added for Vectors).
The way I see it, there are two potential solutions here:
- Redo everything to use pointers. This, as mentioned, breaks existing code.
- Add functions like
func (m *Mat4) MulTo(dst *Mat4, m2 *Mat4)which would have similar semantics to*MatMN.MulMN(dst, m2).
I like option 2, since there's no compatability breakage, but it does clutter the API and people may mistakenly use the slower code without realizing it.
Thoughts?