[Vm-dev] bulid.squeak.org puzzlement

[David T. Lewis]

Actually, OSProcess does not need to poll. That's the purpose of
AioPlugin, which notifies on data available on a descriptor (similar to
what we do with socket reads).

But deterministic or not, it isn't entirely reliable in any case.

Dave

>
> Hi Tim,
>
>     but OSProcess is /not/ deterministic, because of the lack of
> non-blocking i/o calls.  To read from the pipes that provide the
> output of commands, OSProcess has to use loops that poll for output
> after a delay.  This is an awful hack and a source of non-determinism.
>  It's increasingly urgent that we have a threaded FFI and discard
> hacks like this, especially in key infrastructure like spawning
> external commands.  Fortunately thus work will likely get funded next
> year and my prototype should be productized some time in 2016.
>
> _,,,^..^,,,_ (phone)
>
>> On Dec 9, 2015, at 8:37 PM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Thanks for that summary Dave.  Ain’t it scary how a supposedly
>> deterministic machine can seem so random?
>>
>> tim
>> --
>> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
>> After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
>>
>>
>