On Fri, 4 Mar 2011, Mariano Martinez Peck wrote:

> We are really happy to announce that ESUG will sponsor us once again through
> the ESUG Summer Talk project. This means that we have reached the ESUG
> expectations and that they still think that relational database access is an
> important matter in Smalltalk.

snip

> 5) Cog compatibility.

What has to be done?

>
> 6) Use Alien instead of FFI.
> Eliot is working on a threaded CogVM. One of the projects of the GSoC of
> this year was to make something similar to a threaded FFI. What the student
> did is a modification in Alien (I think) that can be run in a multithreaded
> envirorment. He worked with Eliot. The idea is when Eliot releases the
> threaded CogVM, this FFI would work our of the box, and would avoid locking
> the WHOLE vm while a C function is being invoked (as it happens today with
> FFI).....So....when that VM is released, we MUST migrate to that).

How is Alien better than FFI? AFAIK Alien itself is not developed anymore,
parts of it will be merged with FFI.


Levente

P.S.: http://www.squeaksource.com/SqueakDBX.html states that code in the 
repository has MIT license, but it includes Glorp which has LGPL(S) 
license.