[Vm-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] help needed with the new FFI plugin...

[stephane ducasse]

On Jul 22, 2011, at 6:25 PM, Eliot Miranda wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Ricardo Moran <richi.moran at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, indeed. Right now, for most use cases we use the SerialPort class, but we still have some FFI code for other stuff hanging around. I plan to write it as a plugin as soon as I have the time.
> 
> But getting the FFI working on ARM and/or PPC is more effective than writing yet another plugin, no?  We can always add security to the FFI (essentially some way of disabling internal calls within the FFI plugin, e.g. based on cryptographic keys to enable it, or whatever).  So I really do appeal to people to help me put the effort in here.  I can't justify working on the FFI on ARM or PPC in my Cadence Newspeak gig; we're entirely on x86.  I /can/ work on the threaded FFI as we need it at Cadence, just as many other people need it.  But for me to move the threaded FFI ahead it needs to be on all platforms and that means I need help on the platforms I can't justify working on.
> 
> So folks, please give serious consideration to putting effort into something that may be a little harder at first but will yield major benefits slightly later.  Let's defer gratification :)

Personally we would love but to do that you need to know.
This is the key question behind increasing the mass of people knowing. This is why we organize the School and why the blog of mariano is good or the effort of igor to 
make everybody been able to compile the vm. It is a slow and long process.
There is a difference between will and can. At least to me there are plenty of things I would like to do but I'm quite sure I will not be able to do them in this life.

Stef