[Vm-dev] Re: Problem compiling Mac VM

[David T. Lewis]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 09:11:55PM -0700, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
> On 4/29/2010 8:51 PM, David T. Lewis wrote:
> >I suspect that you have discovered some combination of platform
> >sources, configuration files, etc that breaks this, but the intent
> >was to make the change in such a way as to provide backward compatibility
> >even if all of the various platform sources were not updated immediately.
> 
> And to be honest, I think that's a mistake. It leads people to 
> implementing protocols only partially. For example, I hadn't even 
> noticed that John added ioMicroseconds(). If the compile had generated 
> an error, I would have fixed it and moved on. The way it's now we 
> shipped 4.0.1 with a broken microseconds clock. I don't like that.

I see your point. From my point of view, it's nice to be able to
add support for something that one person needs (e.g. microsecond
timers) without requiring agreement from everyone else. And to some
extent I'm trying to avoid the inevitable "I just loaded the latest
VMMaker and now I can't compile a VM" questions.  But perhaps this
causes more problems than it solves.

This thread ("Problem compiling Mac VM") seems to be a good example
of the point you are making. I wonder what John and Ian think?

Dave