Is BC worth the image format switch?

Anthony Hannan ajhannan at yahoo.com
Wed May 1 15:58:04 UTC 2002


--- stephane ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> I would like to know from SqC guys and other what is missing in BC that 
> would impede its integration into the main image (like a decompiler..)?

Of course, the decompiler, swapSender: and everything else on the BC To-Do list
(http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/BlockClosureVersion) will be implemented
before being released into the main image.

> I would like to know if the new architecture is a problem for other 
> processors.

Since BC only makes changes to the Interpreter slang code, I think it will
likely work on other platforms.  The problem I had a couple of months ago on
different platforms was rare and avoidable in the future.  I assumed that the
order of execution of expressions in a single C statement (and thus slang
statement) was left-to-right, but actually C says expressions in a single
statement can be executed in any order, presumably for flexibility of the
optimizer.  I got bitten by this, but found and fixed it, and will be aware of
it in the future.  Otherwise the new BC Interpreter slang code is similar to
the previous code, nothing fancy.

> I think that it would be good to have a list of things that should be 
> developped.

See (and add to) the BC To-Do list mentioned above.

> I'm really concerned by the fact BC is a big changes and that some people 
> may be afraid to change. This would be a pity to have a big change 
> discarded just because this is a big change.

I think people will be willing to make the change if its worth it, especially
if its faster.  I still have some things I want to put into the next release to
make it even faster, including Scott Crosby's method cache enhancements.

Cheers,
Anthony


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