[Vm-dev] Squeak removed from Gentoo Linux

Igor Stasenko siguctua at gmail.com
Thu May 27 21:50:46 UTC 2010


On 28 May 2010 00:11, John M McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 2010-05-27, at 2:06 PM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>
>>
>> On 28 May 2010 00:02, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 5/27/2010 1:56 PM, Josh Gargus wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I loves me my bit-identical computation, but statically linking to the
>>>> same version of the library doesn't necessarily give it.  For example, a
>>>> video decoder may check hardware capabilities, and depending on what it
>>>> finds decode the video on the GPU, using SSE, or just using the non-vector
>>>> CPU instructions.
>>>>
>>>> There are some examples where we would make the case that the library
>>>> needs to be statically linked in order to provide bit-identical
>>>> computation(eg: fdlibm for Croquet math operations), but for things like
>>>> JPEG I think that the argument is pretty weak.
>>>
>>> Agreed.
>>>
>>
>> I really don't wanna put that on flame.
>> Just a single word, which could say more than rest of arguments: UUID plugin.
>>
>
> The UUID plugin does not contain the UUID source code, it's a library call and expect it to use the
> system library. The fact that the system library is broken on some versions of some platforms is of course
> an issue, but frankly it's an issue for all software that uses UUID on that platform.  Also the behaviour of UUID is
> not bit identical on every platform the host operating system.
>
> Obviously this is the problem if you rely on the platform code to do the right thing, but you choice here is
> wanting to enable bit identical behaviour versus ensuring Squeak is put into various Linux distributions?
>

No, i consider my choice differently.
One of the ways to ensure stability is to freeze the code. Then you
don't have unexpected failures, because of
newer version(s). That's maybe a major reason to statically link with
bundled verisons of libraries, instead of
dynamically. Including cases, where our intent to provide a
bit-identical behavior.

It is also about taking a responsibility. If you bundle library , then
you are the only one, who responsible
for making it work right. And if you linking against external library,
then all you can do is to say:
- sorry pal, your platform has broken XYZ, you can't use our software there..


> --
> ===========================================================================
> John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com>   Twitter:  squeaker68882
> Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
> ===========================================================================
>



-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.


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