Given that clojure "embraces the platform", it'd probably be pretty hard to have clojure.net _without_ ikvm in there somewhere. Performance could be increased by porting the code generator and core classes to .net, but users expect to use arbitrary java libraries, so that capability has to be there.
(Seems like that strategy could also be applicable to a native port, using an embedded jvm to handle whatever has not been ported from java land)
(startup takes about 6x times as long with ikvm than java -client. compiling with ikvmc creates a clojure.exe which instead takes 9x to start. clojure-1240 non-slim, java 1.6.0_07, ikvm 0.34.0.4, mono 1.9.1)
It does, but given how quickly it runs, I can't think it's doing that much? I remember playing with it a while ago and not seeing any performance worth remembering.
Apparently the latest version of mono has much better AOT support, and performance improvements as well.
(Seems like that strategy could also be applicable to a native port, using an embedded jvm to handle whatever has not been ported from java land)
and FWIW (i have little .net knowledge)
(startup takes about 6x times as long with ikvm than java -client. compiling with ikvmc creates a clojure.exe which instead takes 9x to start. clojure-1240 non-slim, java 1.6.0_07, ikvm 0.34.0.4, mono 1.9.1)