AW: Re: [squeak-dev] Adding fsync() call to the primitiveFileFlush prim ?

Yoshiki Ohshima Yoshiki.Ohshima at acm.org
Mon May 23 21:28:09 UTC 2016


And Scratch 2.0 on the web does do auto saving.  Partly it may be
because a session is typically on a faster computer but then I usually
don't see any problem with auto saving there.  So as long as it is
asynchronous and happens during the block editing time, I don't think
autosaving would degrade the productivity.

On Sun, May 22, 2016 at 10:33 PM, John Pfersich <smalltalker2 at mac.com> wrote:
> On a Raspberry Pi, which is what we're talking about, yanking the power unceremoniously crashes the system. The Pi doesn't even have a power switch. You can shut down the OS before you power it down, but we're talking about a $35 computer with virtually no bells and whistles. A kid that yanks the power cord deserves what he or she gets. The rest of the OS isn't as forgiving.
>
> I hope that this saving the user from himself doesn't degrade to auto saving because the pauses caused by autosaves can be deadly to productivity, especially on a computer as slow as the Pi. I haven't used Squeak on a Pi, but on my MacBook, a save takes a few seconds, and I've got better things to do than stop working while the save takes place. And the save itself might leave the image in an unstable state.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On May 22, 2016, at 01:40, Herbert König <herbertkoenig at gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> Guess it's a matter of time. Last time I looked we used punched cards, now we just close the lid of our laptop and expect it to do the right things. Give me one serious reason why yanking the power cord _should_ punish the user.
>>
>> That it still does is just another incovenience. It's sooo backwards.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Herbert.
>>
>>
>> -------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --------
>> Von: John Pfersich
>> Datum:22.05.2016 07:36 (GMT+01:00)
>> An: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>> Betreff: Re: [squeak-dev] Adding fsync() call to the primitiveFileFlush prim ?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>> > On May 21, 2016, at 22:07, David T. Lewis <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 10:49:24AM -0700, tim Rowledge wrote:
>> >> The issue here is that the PI - especially when used in schools - is storing everything on a micro-SD card. Being surrounded by kids is a scary thing for a computer. They don???t necessarily bother to do a nice system shutdown or even exit Scratch before yanking the power. Teachers don???t necessarily know to tell them to; lots of people doing their best with insufficient knowledge.
>> >
>> > D'oh, now I get it. I was not thinking of the case of yanking the power cord.
>> > I can well imagine that this might be a bit disruptive for normal process exit
>> > cleanups that are supposed to ensure that fflushed buffers actually make it
>> > to the disk-like media.
>> >
>> >> An interesting thing is that I ???remembered??? that we flush files when closing them but in fact we don???t.
>> >
>> > In a perfect world you do not need to flush a file when closing it, because
>> > closing it implies a flush (e.g. fclose performs an fflush). That said,
>> > yanking the power cord might introduce some imperfections.
>> >
>> > Dave
>> >
>> >
>> And I don't think that people that yank the power cord should be catered to. If you do stupid things, you should pay the consequences. A computer isn't a toaster. And teachers should convey that to their students.
>>
>



-- 
-- Yoshiki


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