Am 01.08.2006 um 07:43 schrieb Andreas Raab:

> nicolas cellier wrote:
>
>> So, the plugin are maybe safer because only a few well experienced  
>> and well behaved programmers dare jump the hurd, in a word because  
>> it is rarely used...
>
> Given the amount of plugins and the amount of FFI usage I think  
> plugin usage outnumbers FFI usage by an order of magnitude at least.

Indeed. Just do a "Smalltalk listLoadedModules" to see which plugins  
you are using *right now*.

You can think of plugins as an extension of the VM, so in principle  
they can be made as safe as the VM itself is - as long as each  
primitive they provide has one specific function that can be checked  
for inputs and side-effects. This is not the case for the FFI  
primitives.

- Bert -