[Vm-dev] rearchitecting the FFI implementation for reentrancy

[David T. Lewis]

Thanks, good advice.

I had listed "64-bit FFI" as last on the suggested to-do list:
  http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2009-July/002853.html

That was on the theory that it's a complex change that requires lots of
coordination, so I figure that it's better to take on some easier changes
first. I guess I had better keep that priority unchanged, and if Eliot
gets his changes done first, well ... too bad for me ;)

Dave

On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 01:05:00AM -0700, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
> David -
> 
> My recommendation would be not to get held up by whatever Eliot is 
> working towards. There is no telling how long it is going to take us 
> until any of it is released since we always go through a full 
> discussion-review-decision cycle before making such choices (incl. 
> approval by the board). In fact, at this point there isn't even any 
> telling whether we're going to release any of it or not ;-)
> 
> So what I'd recommend doing is to move forward with whatever has been on 
> the list of things to do. Eliot is pretty good in folding these things 
> into his work where it makes sense, and 64bit stuff is important for us 
> too; in particular with server deployments.
> 
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
> 
> David T. Lewis wrote:
> > 
> >On Wed, Aug 05, 2009 at 05:56:02PM -0700, Eliot Miranda wrote:
> >> 
> >>Hi All,
> >>    I'm looking at making the Squeak FFI reentrant to support nested calls
> >>and possibly threading.  The current FFI has a couple of issues which 
> >>render
> >>it non-reentrant.
> >
> >Your approach sounds fairly straightforward. Slightly off of your intended
> >topic, but I want to mention also that we have some changes queued up for
> >FFI to address 64 bit pointer issues. The changes are fairly extensive, so
> >I'd like to lobby for getting these done before too much bit rot sets in.
> >
> >For a description of the status of the 64-bit FFI updates:
> >  http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/2008-April/001900.html
> >
> >Patches on Mantis:
> >  http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=7237
> >
> >Eliot, I don't know what your time frame is for doing the reentrant FFI 
> >work,
> >but if we could do the 64-bit updates first that would be a very good thing
> >from my point of view.
> >
> >Is there any interest in taking this on right now? The affected folks are
> >Andreas, Ian, and John. Opinions?
> >
> >Dave
> >